



Produced by Elaine Laizure from images generously made
available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.





THE COZY LION

FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT



The Cozy Lion

As told by Queen Crosspatch

By

Frances Hodgson Burnett

Author of "Little Lord Fauntleroy"

With Illustrations by Harrison Cady





The Century Co.

New York


Copyright, 1907, by

THE CENTURY CO.

Published October, 1907

Printed in U. S. A.




I AM very fond of this story of the Cozy Lion because I consider
it a great credit to me. I reformed that Lion and taught him how
to behave himself. The grown-up person who reads this story aloud
to children MUST know how to Roar.




THE COZY LION

I SHALL never forget the scolding I gave him to begin with. One
of the advantages of being a Fairy even quite a common one is
that Lions can't bite you. A Fairy is too little and too light.
If they snap at you it's easy to fly through their mouths, and
even if they catch you, if you just get behind their teeth you
can make them so uncomfortable that they will beg you to get out
and leave them in peace.

Of course it was all the Lion's fault that I scolded him. Lions
ought to live far away from people. Nobody likes Lions roaming
about--particularly where there are children. But this Lion said he
wanted to get into Society, and that he was very fond of children--
little fat ones between three and four. So instead of living on a
desert, or in a deep forest or a jungle he took the large Cave on
the Huge Green Hill, only a few miles from a village full of the
fattest, rosiest little children you ever saw.

He had only been living in the Cave a few days, but even in that
short time the mothers and fathers had found out he was there, and
everybody who could afford it had bought a gun and snatched it up
even if they saw a donkey coming down the road, because they were
afraid it might turn out to be a Lion. As for the mothers, they
were nearly crazy with fright, and dare not let their children go
out to play and had to shut them up in top rooms and cupboards and
cellars, they were so afraid the Lion might be hiding behind trees
to jump out at them. So everything was beginning to be quite
spoiled because nobody could have any fun.

Of course if they had had any sense and believed in Fairies and had
just gone out some moonlight night and all joined hands and danced
slowly around in a circle and sung:

     Fairies pink and Fairies rose
     Fairies dancing on pearly toes
        We want you, Oh! we want you!
     Fairy Queens and Fairy slaves
     Who are not afraid of Lions' Caves
        Please to come to help us,

then it would have been all right, because we should have come in
millions, especially if they finished with this verse:

     Our troubles we can never tell
     But if _you_ would come it would all be well
        Par-tic-u-lar-ly Silverbell.


But they hadn't sense enough for that--of course they hadn't--_of
course they hadn't_! Which shows what <DW38>s people are.

But you see I am much nicer than _un_-fairy persons, even if I have
lost my nice little, pink little, sweet little Temper and if I am
cross. So when I saw the children fretting and growing pale because
they had to be shut up, and the mothers crying into their washtubs
when they were washing, until the water slopped over, I made up my
mind I would go and talk to that Lion myself in a way he wouldn't
soon forget.

It was a beautiful morning, and the Huge Green Hill looked lovely.
A shepherd who saw me thought I was a gold and purple butterfly and
threw his hat at me--the idiot! Of course he fell down on his nose--
and very right and proper too.

When I got to the Cave, the Lion was sitting outside his door and
he was crying. He was one of these nasty-tempered, discontented
Lions who are always thinking themselves injured; large round tears
were rolling down his nose and he was sniffling. But I must say he
was handsome. He was big and smooth and had the most splendid mane
and tail I ever saw.

He would have been like a King if he had had a nicer expression.
But there he sat sniffling.

"I'm so lonely," he said. "Nobody calls. Nobody pays me any
attention. And I came here for the Society. No one is fonder of
Society than I am."

I sat down on a flowering branch near him and shouted at him,
"What's the use of Society when you eat it up?" I said.

He jumped up and lashed his tail and growled but at first he could
not see me.

"What's it for _but_ to be eaten up?" he roared. "First I want it
to entertain me and then I want it for dessert. Where are you? Who
are you?"

"I'm Queen Crosspatch--Queen Silverbell as was," I said. "I suppose
you have heard of _me_?"

"I've heard nothing good," he growled. "A good chewing is what
_you_ want!"

He _had_ heard something about me, but not enough. The truth was he
didn't really believe in Fairies--which was what brought him into
trouble.

By this time he had seen me and he was ignorant enough to think
that he could catch me, so he laid down flat in the thick, green
grass and stretched his big paws out and rested his nose on them,
thinking I would be taken in and imagine he was going to sleep. I
burst out laughing at him and swung to and fro on my flowery
branch.

"Do you want to eat me?" I said. "You'd need two or three quarts of
me with sugar and cream--like strawberries."

That made him so angry that he sprang roaring at my tree and
snapped and shook it and tore it with his claws. But I flew up into
the air and buzzed all about him and he got furious--just furious.
He jumped up in the air and lashed his tail and _thrashed_ his tail
and CRASHED his tail, and he turned round and round and tore up the
grass.

"Don't be a silly," I said. "It's a nice big tufty sort of tail and
you will only wear it out."

So then he opened his mouth and roared and roared. And what do you
suppose _I_ did? I flew right into his mouth. First I flew into his
throat and buzzed about like a bee and made him cough and cough and
cough--but he couldn't cough me up. He coughed and he houghed and
he woughed; he tried to catch me with his tongue and he tried to
catch me with his teeth but I simply made myself tinier and tinier
and got between two big fierce white double ones and took one of my
Fairy Workers' hammers out of my pocket and hammered and hammered
and hammered until he began to have such a jumping toothache that
he ran leaping and roaring down the Huge Green Hill and leaping and
roaring down the village street to the dentist's to get some
toothache drops. You can just imagine how all the people rushed
into their houses, and how the mothers screamed and clutched their
children and hid under beds and tables and in coalbins, and how the
fathers fumbled about for guns. As for the dentist, he locked his
door and bolted it and barred it, and when he found _his_ gun he
poked it out of the window and fired it off as fast as ever he
could until he had fired fifty times, only he was too frightened to
hit anything. But the village street was so full of flashes and
smoke and bullets that Mr. Lion turned with ten big roars and
galloped down the street, with guns fired out of every window where
the family could afford to keep a gun.

When he got to his home in the Huge Green Hill, he just laid down
and cried aloud and screamed and kicked his hind legs until he
scratched a hole in the floor of his cave.

"Just because I'm a Lion," he sobbed, "just because I'm a poor,
sensitive, helpless, orphan Lion nobody has one particle of
manners. They won't even sell me a bottle of toothache drops. And I
wasn't going to touch that dentist--until he had cured me and
wrapped up the bottle nicely in paper. Not a touch was I going to
touch him until he had done that."

He opened his mouth so wide to roar with grief that I flew out of
it. I had meant to give him a lesson and I'd given him one. When I
flew out of his mouth of course his beautiful double teeth stopped
aching. It was such a relief to him that it made quite a change in
his nature and he sat up and began to smile. It was a slow smile
which spread into a grin even while the tear-drops hung on his
whiskers.

"My word! How nice," he said. "It's stopped."

I had flown to the top of his ear and I shouted down it.

"I stopped it," I said. "And I began it. And if you don't behave
yourself, I'll give you earache and that will be worse."

Before I had given him his lesson he would have jumped at me but
now he knew better. He tried to touch my feelings and make me sorry
for him. He put one paw before his eyes and began to sniff again.

"I am a poor sensitive lonely orphan Lion,' he said.

"You are nothing of the sort," I answered very sharply. "You are
not poor, and heaven knows you are not sensitive, and you needn't
be lonely. I don't know whether you are an orphan or not--and I
don't care. You are a nasty, ill-tempered, selfish, biting, chewing
thing."

"There's a prejudice against Lions," he wept. "People don't like
them. They never invite them to children's parties--nice little
fat, tender, children's parties--where they would enjoy themselves
so much--and the refreshments would be just what they like best.
They don't even invite them to grown-up parties. What I want to ask
you is this: has _one_ of those villagers called on me since I came
here--even a tough one?"

"Nice stupids they would be if they did," I answered.

He lifted up his right paw and shook his head from side to side in
the most mournful way.

"There," he said. "You are just as selfish as the rest. Everybody
is selfish. There is no brotherly love or consideration in the
world. Sometimes I can scarcely bear it. I am going to ask you
another question, and it is almost like a riddle. Who did you ever
see try to give pleasure to a Lion?"

I got into his ear then and shouted down it as loud as ever I
could.

"Who did you ever see a _Lion_ try to give pleasure to?" I said.
"You just think over that. And when you find the answer, tell it to
_me_."

I don't know whether it was the newness of the idea, or the
suddenness of it, but he turned pale. Did you ever see a Lion turn
pale? I never did before and it was funny. You know people's skins
turn pale but a Lion's skin is covered with hair and you can't see
it, so his hair has to turn pale or else you would never know he
was turning pale at all. This Lion's hair was a beautiful tawny
golden color to begin with and first his whiskers turned white and
then his big mane and then his paws and then his body and last his
long splendid tail with the huge fluffy tuft on the end of it. Then
he stood up and his tail hung down and he said weakly:

"I do not know the answer to that riddle. I will go and lie down in
my Cave. I do not believe I have one friend in this world." And he
walked into his Cave and laid down and sobbed bitterly.

He forgot I was inside his ear and that he carried me with him. But
I can tell you I had given him something to think of and that was
what he needed. This way of feeling that nothing in the world but a
Lion has a right to be comfortable--just because you happen to be a
Lion yourself--is too _silly_ for anything.

I flew outside his ear and boxed it a little.

"Come!" I said. "Crying won't do you any good. Are you really
lonely--really--really--really so that it gives you a hollow
feeling?"

He sat up and shook his tears away so that they splashed all about--
something like rain.

"Yes," he answered, "to tell the truth I am--I _do_ like Society. I
want friends and neighbors--and I don't only want them for dessert,
I am a sociable Lion and am affectionate in my nature--and
clinging. And people run as fast as they can the moment they hear
my voice." And he quite choked with the lump in his throat.

"Well," I snapped, "what else do you expect?" That overcame him and
he broke into another sob. "I expect kindness," he said, "and
invitations to afternoon teas--and g-g-arden parties----"

"Well you won't get them," I interrupted, "If you don't change your
ways. If you _eat_ afternoon teas and garden parties as though they
were lettuce sandwiches, you can't expect to be invited to them. So
you may as well go back to the desert or the jungle and live with
Lions and give up Society altogether."

"But ever since I was a little tiny Lion--a tiny, tiny one--I have
wanted to get into Society. I _will_ change--I will! Just tell me
what to do. And do sit on my ear and talk down it and stroke it. It
feels so comfortable and friendly."

You see he had forgotten that he had meant to chew me up. So I
began to give him advice.

"The first things you will have to do will be to change your temper
and your heart and your diet, and stop growling and roaring when
you are not pleased.'

"I'll do that, I'll do that," he said ever so quickly. "You don't
want me to cut my mane and tail off, do you?"

"No. You are a handsome Lion and beauty is much admired." Then I
snuggled quite close up to his ear and said down it, "Did you ever
think how _nice_ a Lion would be if--if he were much nicer?"

"N-no," he faltered.

"Did you ever think how like a great big cozy lovely dog you are?
And how nice your big fluffy mane would be for little girls and
boys to cuddle in, and how they could play with you and pat you and
hug you and