Page:Nine Unlikely Tales.djvu/119

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THE BLUE MOUNTAIN
111

next him, and throwing ink pellets at more studious boys.

But the journey was longer than he expected, and the mug was rather in his way. He was very much afraid of breaking that mug: it is an awkward thing to break a mug with “A present for a good King” on it. It is so difficult to replace. There are very few of those mugs made nowadays. There is little or no demand for them.

But at last the green light of the forest began to grow brighter, and Tony saw that he was approaching a sort of clearing among the trees, so he put his best foot foremost, without stopping to think which was his worst foot—always a mistake when you are tired and footsore.

And now he came out from under the tall branches, and saw a round open space in the forest, where millions of fallen trees lay on the ground. And he knew that this was the spot where the mountain had sat down to eat its unimaginable enormous breakfast. But there was no mountain to be seen, and Tony knew that he could do nothing but sit down and wait, in the hope that the Blue Mountain would come next morning to eat its breakfast in the same place.