They passed through the tunnel in the willow bushes, wriggled through the orchard, skirted the barn, and crossed the vegetable garden. The dragon stepped very carefully, lifting his feet so he wouldn’t crush the new carrots and beets.
They crossed the little bridge over the creek, went up the lane past the fishpond, and wound their way through the rose garden.
At last they saw Grandma Baxter standing at the window of her upstairs bedroom. She was wearing her lavender cap.
Grandma Baxter had been sitting all alone in her little room, dreaming in her famous rocking chair.
Why was the rocking chair famous?
Well, for one thing, it had come all the way across the Atlantic Ocean on the Mayflower and had rocked through many storms.
For another, George Washington had once sat in it.
And there was a third reason.
The chair could talk.
Of course, it didn’t talk the way people did. It made a creaky, groaning sort of sound that only Grandma could understand. It told her wonderful stories about the English forest where it had been born and about all the adventures it had experienced.
Sometimes, in the middle of the night, it would even chuckle and rock back and forth when nobody was sitting in it.
And Grandma would chuckle right along with it.
Yes, Grandma had been dreaming.
She had been dreaming about things that had happened a very long time ago, back before there were automobiles, electric lights, phonographs, Jell-O, cornflakes, and all the other things people now took for granted.
As Grandma sat there dreaming, she wore a funny little smile.
It wasn’t just a funny smile.
It was also a wise smile, a kind smile, and, somewhere underneath it all, a little sad smile.
That was Grandma’s way.
She could be many things at once, and you never knew exactly what was going to pop out of her next.
Suddenly she woke from her dreams and saw the children—and the dragon.
For a moment, Grandma was sure she was still dreaming.
She rubbed her eyes.
Then she looked again.
“Dear me!” she exclaimed.
She rubbed her eyes a second time.
But the next moment she sprang up like a purple finch.
Her lavender gown rustled, and the bag of peppermints in her silk pocket rattled as she hurried to the window.
Her little head popped out, with her lavender cap sitting crookedly on top of it.
“Heigho!” Grandma called. “What’s all this?”
The dragon heard her immediately and stopped.
He looked up toward the window.
His blue eyes twinkled.
Then he turned to Peter, who was standing beside his ear.
“Is that Grandma?”
“Yes, that’s Grandma,” Peter answered.
He waved his sword at the old lady.
“Hello, Grams! I want you to meet Mr. Dwagon, the last dwagon in the whole, whole world.”
“Oh, how do you do, Mr. Dragon?” Grandma called back, leaning far out of the window. “I’m so delighted you called.”
Then she added:
“Bring him around to the front, Peter. Never take a dragon through the kitchen.”
Before Peter, Johnathan, or anyone else could answer, Grandma disappeared from the window.
“Quite delightful, isn’t she?” the dragon chuckled.
“We told you she was!” Janet Jane cried happily.
“Keep to the right of the tulips, if you don’t mind, Mr. Dragon,” Johnathan instructed.
Grandma was already waiting impatiently on the front steps of the Baxter house.
Her sharp eyes twinkled behind her spectacles, and her pretty white hands fluttered with excitement like butterflies on a summer day.
Anyone watching them would have thought Grandma and the dragon were old, old friends.
Johnathan even wondered if Grandma had met the dragon somewhere before.
Grandma could be mysterious like that.
“Well, I’ll just have to kiss you,” Grandma declared. “That’s all there is to it!”
She flew down the steps in a rustle of silk and pressed her lips against the dragon’s green cheek.
“The nicest thing that’s ever happened to me,” the dragon purred, “since my lady mother kissed me.”
His golden claws stretched out gently, almost like velvet-covered paws.
“I found him, Grams!” Peter announced proudly, puffing out his chest.
“Of course you did!” Grandma laughed.
She hugged Peter.
“Who else would be more likely to find a beautiful dragon?”
“But now we have to hide him somewhere,” Janet Jane said. “I’m afraid he’s a little too large.”
Just then, from the road winding up the hill from town, came the hum of a motor car.
Johnathan heard it first.
“There comes Mother!” he shouted. “Get Mr. Dragon upstairs! Quick!”
There had never been such a frantic scramble.
If you have never tried to squeeze a perfectly healthy, perfectly normal, full-sized dragon into a modern house built for perfectly normal people, you cannot imagine how difficult it was.
It took strategy.
It took pushing and pulling.
It took grunting and squealing.
All the children planted their feet firmly on the floor and strained with all their strength.
The dragon puffed and squeezed in his waist as much as he could.
Then he would let it out again.
“Oh, dear me! Dear, dear me!” he cried every few seconds. “This will never, never do! No, never, never do!”
If Grandma had not been there to supervise, it was doubtful that the children could ever have gotten him inside.
But Grandma was full of helpful suggestions.
By the time Mrs. Baxter had driven her bright blue automobile around to the garage, the dragon’s glittering tail was already halfway up the hall stairs.
Unfortunately, halfway up the stairs was not the nursery.
And it certainly wasn’t underneath Peter’s bed, which was where Johnathan had planned to hide him.
The dragon’s head was in the nursery, along with his shoulders and part of his back.
But his terribly long tail was still sticking out.
“That tail is a problem,” Johnathan said.
“Couldn’t you curl it around yourself like a cat?” Grandma suggested.
“Under these extremely cramped circumstances, that is impossible,” the dragon replied.
A helpless tear appeared in each of his eyes.
“Seems to me,” Johnathan said thoughtfully, “that I once read somewhere that dragons could change themselves into any size they wanted.”
Janet Jane clapped her hands.
“Yes! I read that too. It’s in my red fairy book.”
She turned eagerly to the dragon.
“Can’t you turn yourself into a little green worm, Mr. Dragon, just for a while?”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t do that either.”
“Why not?”
“I’ve forgotten the formula.”
“Gracious!” Grandma cried. “Can’t you possibly remember it?”
“No. I’ve always had a remarkably poor memory.”
He sighed.
“It was a very complicated formula, and there was a magic verse attached to it that was extremely difficult to remember. When I was little, my stern father gave me many a spanking because I couldn’t remember it.”
“There’s a magic verse in my red fairy book,” Janet Jane said. “Maybe that will help.”
She thought for a moment and began:
“Blue, blue earth,
And black, black sky,
Pink, pink frog
That cannot fly.”
The dragon slowly shook his head.
“I’m afraid that doesn’t help me at all.”
“Why not?” Janet Jane asked.
“It has to be your own particular magic verse before it works. It’s like having your own particular porridge bowl or your own particular napkin ring.”
He sighed again.
“Well, I suppose I’d better leave and go back to the cave. There’s no point in staying here and getting all of you children into trouble.”
The dragon sighed so deeply that all the curtains in the nursery blew outward through the windows.
One of the fat feather pillows flew right off Peter’s little bed.
The children cried out in protest.
But their cries were interrupted by Mrs. Baxter’s voice.
She had just entered the house through the French doors on the side porch.
“What are you children doing indoors?” she called.
“I thought I told you to play in the meadow until luncheon!”
“We—we—” Johnathan began.
But Grandma silenced him.
“Let me take care of this, Johnathan,” she said.
She started downstairs, stepping carefully so she wouldn’t step on the dragon’s tail.
Grandma had hoped to meet Mrs. Baxter in the living room and stop her before she came into the hall.
But she was too late.
Mrs. Baxter was already standing at the bottom of the stairs.
She was staring in horror at the long green tail.
“What is that ugly thing?” she demanded.
“Be calm, Kate. Be calm,” Grandma said.
“It’s only a dragon.”
“A dragon?” Mrs. Baxter cried. “For heaven’s sake, where did it come from?”
“Peter found it.”
“Found it? How could he possibly find a dragon?”
“Very easily,” Grandma replied. “Easier than finding a pocketbook.”
“Oh, isn’t it terrible?” Mrs. Baxter exclaimed. “Where are the children? Has it eaten any of them yet?”
She turned toward the telephone.
“I’ll call the police and the fire department!”
Grandma stopped her before she could reach it.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Kate!” she snapped, rising onto her tiptoes. “The children are perfectly safe. It’s an adorable dragon.”
“Adorable?” Mrs. Baxter cried. “Whoever heard of an adorable dragon?”
She pointed at the tail.
“That long green tail is perfectly hideous! What is it doing upstairs?”
“The children were trying to hide him in the nursery,” Grandma explained proudly, “and I was helping them.”
“Are you insane, Grandma Baxter?”
Mrs. Baxter stared at her.
“Helping the children hide a dragon in the nursery! It was bad enough when you bought them that vicious nanny goat.”
“That nanny goat wasn’t vicious,” Grandma replied with dignity.
“It butted no one except the butcher’s boy, and he deserved it because he hit that perfectly innocent animal with a slingshot.”
Before Grandma could say anything else, a sharp scream came from upstairs.
Then came frightened sobbing.
It was Susan Oliver, who seemed to have a talent for doing exactly the wrong thing at exactly the wrong time.
The dragon had been trying to squeeze farther upstairs when one of his fin-like scales accidentally flipped Susan.
It hadn’t hurt her at all.
But it had frightened her badly, and she burst into tears.
Naturally, Mrs. Baxter assumed the dragon was hurting the children.
She rushed to the foot of the stairs.
“Children! Come down here at once! All of you!”
Susan stopped crying.
There was silence.
Mrs. Baxter called again.
“Children! Do you hear me? Come down at once!”
Imagine her surprise when the children came sliding down on the dragon’s back and off his tail.
They treated him just like a shiny, smooth banister—the exciting kind that was long, slippery, and curved.
First came Peter in his armor.
Then Johnathan in his kingly robes.
Then Janet Jane in her pink wrapper.
Then Billy Rose in his rusty armor.
Then Kath in her green train.
Then Mary in her circus rider’s costume.
And finally Polly in her mother’s riding habit.
Susan Oliver was the only one who didn’t take the slide.
She was too busy crying.
She missed an experience that the other children would talk about for years.
After all, sliding down the back of a real dragon was not something that happened every day.
The children landed together in a heap at Mrs. Baxter’s feet.
They quickly untangled themselves.
Then the three little Baxters surrounded their mother and began pleading all at once.
“Oh, please don’t be cross with him, Mother!”
“Please let us keep him, Mother!”
“Please don’t send him away, Mother!”
“He’s beautiful, Mother!”
“We love him, Mother!”
Billy Rose stepped aside with Kath, Polly, and Mary.
He was already prepared to make his own offer.
“Let me take him, Mrs. Baxter. My mother won’t mind.”
And that was perfectly true.
Billy’s mother let him do almost anything he wanted.
That was why Billy was always getting into trouble.
Even practical people can get into trouble when they are allowed to do exactly as they please.
“Children, be quiet!” Mrs. Baxter commanded.
“It’s ridiculous to think you can keep a huge monster like that in our house.”
She pointed toward the dragon.
“Why, we couldn’t even go upstairs without stepping on him.”
“And besides, he may be gentle right now, but no dragon could live around children for very long without eventually wanting to eat one of them for breakfast.”
“No, Mother,” Peter piped up. “He only eats grass.”
“Hush, Peter.”
Mrs. Baxter shook her head.
“And there’s another thing. You know how your father feels about pets in the house.”
“If he objects to dogs and cats, what do you suppose he would say about a huge dragon?”
She looked firmly at the children.
“No, my dears. Your dragon has to go.”