One evening at six o’clock Jip shut the doors of the post office as usual, and hung up the sign “Closed” as he always did at that hour. The Doctor heard the bolts being shot and he stopped counting postcards and took out his pipe to have a smoke.
That was why, she said, she hated all white men and had not wanted to speak to the Doctor when he had hailed her canoe.
“But just as they were about to begin on the fish (the soup was already gone, you see), there was a great noise outside the dining hall and in rushed another lot of little men, a bright red in color. These were The Toadstool Sprites, ancient enemies of the Cook Goblins. A tremendous fight began, one side using toothpicks for spears and the other using nut crackers for clubs. The pig took the side of his friends the Cook Goblins, and, being as big as any two of the enemy put together, he soon had the Toadstool Sprites running for their lives.
“Your obedient servant,
“Doctor,” said the thrush, who was also very upset and breathless, “it wasn’t my fault. I never let those pearls out of my sight. I flew straight off for the Harmattan Rocks. But part of the trip I had to go over land, if I took the shortest cut. And on the way I saw a sister of mine whom I hadn’t met in a long time, sitting in a tree in the jungle below me. And I thought it would be no harm if I went and talked to her a while. So I flew down and she was very glad to see me. I couldn’t talk properly with the string of the package in my mouth, so I put the parcel down on the bough of the tree behind meright near me, you understandand went on talking to my sister. And when I turned around to pick it up again it was gone.”
“‘He’s most frightfully poor,’ said my friend. ‘And he’s too old to work, you seeeven if he had two legs to get around on. And now he has taken to pavement art. You know what that isyou draw pictures on the pavement in colored chalks and you write under them: “All my own work.” And then you sit by the side of them, with your cap in your hand, waiting for people to give you pennies.’
“Mudface.”
The Doctor, on hearing this, felt glad that he had already got the pink pearls safely off to their owner by registered mail. Then he told the King that he hoped shortly to take a holiday because he was overworked and needed a rest. The King asked where he was going, and the Doctor said he thought of taking a week’s canoe trip up the coast toward the Harmattan Rocks.
“I’m going to have a greengrocer’s shop of my own when I grow up,” murmured Gub-Gub, “in England where they grow good vegetablesI’m awfully tired of Africaand then I’ll watch the new vegetables coming into season all the year round.”
“So, since I wasn’t doing the children any good, I went off to look up this other owl and see if he had any ideas to suggest. I found him sitting on the stump of a hollow birch, rubbing his eyes, having just got out of bed.
And soon money began to pour into the country from the pearl fishing business which the Doctor had established and the people were prosperous and had all the food they wanted.
“Good,” said John Dolittle. “Then they can take these Panama letters for me. It won’t be much out of their way. What do Golden Jays eat?”
“But what kind of work is invalids’ work?” asked the white mouse.
