The King of the Moon
Chapter V
As they came forward Mr. Gray-Squirrel made a polite bow, and Mrs. Bunny and Mrs. Squirrel made nice little courtesies, but poor Mr. Bunnikins-Bunny, in the middle of a most elegant bow, got his legs so twisted up with his sword, that he turned a complete somersault right into the Moon King’s lap!
“Never mind,” said the King, as he kindly helped him to his feet, “accidents will happen. Have a piece of cheese?”
On the broad arm of the King’s throne was a plate full of green cheese, of which he took a large piece himself, after offering it to the Bunnies and the Squirrels.
“Do you make your own cheese?” asked Mrs. Bunnikins-Bunny, as she tasted it.
“It is made for me in the Milky Way,” replied the Moon King. “No cows have been allowed in the Moon, since a very rude one jumped right over my head many years ago.”
Just then there was a loud squeal of terror from the other end of the room. Bobtail had found the queer cheese so horrid, that he simply could not eat it. He had wandered off, hoping to find some dark corner in which to hide it, and had stumbled into a mouse trap, and been caught by the leg.
“Dear! Dear!” said the King, as they all ran to help poor Bobtail. “I am so sorry, but you see mice like cheese almost as much as I do, and so I have to set traps everywhere. Now you shall have a peep from my Look-Out-Window,” he continued, taking Bobtail by the paw.
Far, far below they could see the great round earth looking like a little ball, but it made them all so dizzy, that they did not look very long.
“Do you never get sleepy?” asked Mrs. Gray-Squirrel.
“Not very often,” answered the Moon King. “There are times when I can watch with one eye, and then I have taught the other eye to go to sleep.”
“I thought you had a dog?” said Mr. Bunnikins-Bunny.
“I did have a very fine yellow dog, but alas, I lost him long ago,” and the King, with a sigh, wiped away a tear. “His name was Ebenezer, but we called him Sneezer for short, because he was so fond of mouse patties flavored with pepper, which made him sneeze. He was always chasing cats. One day he heard one miaow, and jumping on the ledge of my Great Window, he slipped and fell out, I don’t know where.
“Since then, however, so many yellow dogs have been seen on the Island of Sirius, that it is now called the Dog Star, and I believe that Sneezer landed there.”
While the King had been talking, the children had crept behind the cloud curtain to try and see the Dog Star. Bobtail had leaned out so far that he lost his balance, and would have surely gone to join Sneezer, had not one of the King’s footmen grabbed him by his short tail.
As it was now late, the Bunnikins-Bunnies and the Gray-Squirrels, after thanking the King for his kindness, said good-by, and the cloud curtain being drawn back, the King of the Moon gazed down once more upon the sleeping earth.