For written on the collar in big letters were these words: “JIP—_TheCleverest Dog in the World._”
Then the whole crowd moved down to the beach to see them off. And afterthe red-haired fisherman and his sister and the little boy had thankedthe Doctor and his dog over and over and over again, the great, swiftship with the red sails was turned once more towards Puddleby and theysailed out to sea, while the village-band played music on the shore.
_THE LAST CHAPTER_
HOME AGAIN
MARCH winds had come and gone; April’s showers were over; May’s budshad opened into flower; and the June sun was shining on the pleasantfields, when John Dolittle at last got back to his own country.
But he did not yet go home to Puddleby. First he went traveling throughthe land with the pushmi-pullyu in a gipsy-wagon, stopping at all thecountry-fairs. And there, with the acrobats on one side of them and thePunch-and-Judy show on the other, they would hang out a big sign whichread, “COME AND SEE THE MARVELOUS TWO-HEADED ANIMAL FROM THE JUNGLES OFAFRICA. Admission SIXPENCE.”
And the pushmi-pullyu would stay inside the wagon, while the otheranimals would lie about underneath. The Doctor sat in a chair in fronttaking the sixpences and smiling on the people as they went in; andDab-Dab was kept busy all the time scolding him because he would letthe children in for nothing when she wasn’t looking.
And menagerie-keepers and circus-men came and asked the Doctor to sellthem the strange creature, saying they would pay a tremendous lot ofmoney for him. But the Doctor always shook his head and said,
“No. The pushmi-pullyu shall never be shut up in a cage. He shall befree always to come and go, like you and me.”
Many curious sights and happenings they saw in this wandering life; butthey all seemed quite ordinary after the great things they had seen anddone in foreign lands. It was very interesting at first, being sort ofpart of a circus; but after a few weeks they all got dreadfully tiredof it and the Doctor and all of them were longing to go home.
“The Doctor sat in a chair in front”]
But so many people came flocking to the little wagon and paid thesixpence to go inside and see the pushmi-pullyu that very soon theDoctor was able to give up being a showman.
And one fine day, when the hollyhocks were in full bloom, he came backto Puddleby a rich man, to live in the little house with the big garden.
And the old lame horse in the stable was glad to see him; and so werethe swallows who had already built their nests under the eaves of hisroof and had young ones. And Dab-Dab was glad, too, to get back to thehouse she knew so well—although there was a terrible lot of dusting tobe done, with cobwebs everywhere.
And after Jip had gone and shown his golden collar to the conceitedcollie next-door, he came back and began running round the gardenlike a crazy thing, looking for the bones he had buried long ago,and chasing the rats out of the tool-shed; while Gub-Gub dug up thehorseradish which had grown three feet high in the corner by thegarden-wall.
“He began running round the garden like a crazy thing”]
And the Doctor went and saw the sailor who had lent him the boat, andhe bought two new ships for him and a rubber-doll for his baby; andhe paid the grocer for the food he had lent him for the journey toAfrica. And he bought another piano and put the white mice back init—because they said the bureau-drawer was drafty.
Even when the Doctor had filled the old money-box on the dresser-shelf,he still had a lot of money left; and he had to get three moremoney-boxes, just as big, to put the rest in.
“Money,” he said, “is a terrible nuisance. But it’s nice not to have toworry.”
“Yes,” said Dab-Dab, who was toasting muffins for his tea, “it isindeed!”
And when the Winter came again, and the snow flew against thekitchen-window, the Doctor and his animals would sit round the big,warm fire after supper; and he would read aloud to them out of hisbooks.
But far away in Africa, where the monkeys chattered in the palm-treesbefore they went to bed under the big yellow moon, they would say toone another,
“I wonder what The Good Man’s doing now—over there, in the Land of theWhite Men! Do you think he ever will come back?”
And Polynesia would squeak out from the vines,
“I think he will—I guess he will—I hope he will!”
And then the crocodile would grunt up at them from the black mud of theriver,
“I’m SURE he will—Go to sleep!”
THE END]
* * * * *
Transcriber’s Notes:
Page 79, period added at end of sentence (had not seen before.)
Page 119, single closing quote added to caption about rats.
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