The Little Bookroom by Eleanor Farjeon Read Free Book Online

ship.’
    â€˜What are you doing here if you are not a fish?’
    â€˜Just at present I am doing nothing, for I am becalmed. But when the wind blows I shall go on sailing round the world.’
    â€˜What is the world?’
    â€˜All that you see and more.’
    â€˜Am I in the world, then?’ asked the Goldfish.
    â€˜Certainly you are.’
    The Goldfish gave a little jump of delight. ‘Good news! good news!’ he cried.
    A passing Porpoise paused to ask, ‘What are you shouting for?’
    â€˜Because I am in the world!’
    â€˜Who says so?’
    â€˜The Ship-Fish!’ said the Goldfish.
    â€˜Pooh!’ said the Porpoise, ‘let him prove it!’ and passed on.
    The Goldfish stopped jumping, because his joy had been damped by doubt. ‘How can the world be more than I can see?’ he asked the Ship. ‘If I am really in the world I ought to be able to see it all —or how can I be sure?’
    â€˜You must take my word for it,’ said the Ship. ‘A tiny fellow like you can never hope to see more than a scrap of the world. The world has a rim you can never see over; the world has foreign lands full of wonders that you can never look upon; the world is as round as an orange, but you will never see how round the world is.’
    Then the ship went on to tell of the parts of the world that lay beyond the rim of things, of men and women and children, of flowers and trees, of birds with eyes in their tails, blue, gold, and green, of white and black elephants, and temples hung with tinkling bells. The Goldfish wept with longing because he could never see over the rim of things, because he could not see how round the world was, because he could not behold all at once all the wonders that were in the world.
    How the Ship laughed at him! ‘My little friend,’ said he, ‘if you were the Moon yonder, why, if you were the Sun himself, you could only see one half of these things at a time.’
    â€˜Who is the Moon yonder?’ asked the Goldfish.
    â€˜Who else but that silver slip of light up in the sky?’
    â€˜Is that the sky?’ said the Goldfish. ‘I thought it was another sea. And is that the Moon? I thought she was a Silver Fish. But who then is the Sun?’
    â€˜The Sun is the round gold ball that rolls through the sky by day,’ said the Ship. ‘They say he is her lover, and gives her his light.’
    â€˜But I will give her the world!’ cried the Goldfish. And he leaped with all his tiny might into the air, but he could not reach the Moon, and fell gasping into the sea. There he let himself sink like a little gold stone to the bottom of the ocean, where he lay for a week weeping his heart out. For the things the Ship had told him were more than he could understand; but they swelled him with great longings—longings to possess the Silver Moon, to be a mightier fish than the Sun, and to see the whole of the world from top to bottom and from side to side, with all the wonders within and beyond it.
    Now it happened that King Neptune, who ruled the land under the waves, was strolling through a grove of white and scarlet coral, when he heard a chuckle that was something between a panting and a puffing; and peering through the branches of the coral-trees he beheld a plump Porpoise bursting its sleek sides with laughter. Not far off lay the Goldfish, swimming in tears.
    King Neptune, like a good father, preferred to share in all the joys and sorrows of his children, so he stopped to ask the Porpoise, ‘What tickles you so?’
    â€˜Ho! ho! ho!’ puffed the Porpoise. ‘I am tickled by the grief of the Goldfish there.’
    â€˜Has the Goldfish a grief?’ asked King Neptune.
    â€˜He has indeed! For seven days and nights he has wept because, ho! ho! ho! because he cannot marry the Moon, surpass the Sun, and possess the world!’
    â€˜And you,’ said King Neptune, ‘have you never