Come closer, little ones, and let me tell you a wonderful story about a place where dreams float in the air like bubbles. This is the tale of Bella the Bubble, who lived in a magical realm known as Bubble Land. It was a place where the sun always shone, and the meadows danced with joy.
One bright sunny day, Bella began to notice strange thumping sounds coming from the Valley of Hooping. The more she listened, the more curious she became. “I must investigate,” she decided, so she floated down, down into the valley, where she encountered her cousin, Bob the Bubble.
“Bob, what’s making that noise over there?” Bella pointed to a group of bubbles at one end of the valley, hopping about with great enthusiasm.
“Why, that’s Timothy,” replied Bob. “He’s the newly appointed court gardener and is now the happiest bubble you could wish to see.”
“But what’s he doing to make all that noise?” Bella pressed.
“Don’t you know? Timothy’s got drumsticks and is beating a parody he made up himself, and we bubbles do love a parody. Come and listen,” Bob invited, and they floated over together.
Timothy was doing wonderfully. Up in the air he cried, and down came that delicious sound, let us hope he won’t get a cold in his head by rushing about so much, and all to satisfy two little fellow-creatures, the Bouncing Bubbles. After Timothy finished, there was a great applause, and Bella and Bob both took a tumble forward right near Timothy, as all the bubbles shouted, “Three cheers for the orchestra!”
“You see hops,” said Bob. “Down one of them comes the throne of Bubble Land over which, you know, we all pass in honour to the newly-appointed ruler, to get his hand or whatever it is on the sceptre.”
“Then mustn’t we be off? We shall be wanted to-morrow,” cried Bella. And her cousin Bob floated off with her.
“Bob, do you think I can float high enough tomorrow to pass on my head?” asked Bella.
“Oh, I should think so, decidedly! That’s nothing. You’ll learn to float in and out of the clouds if you only try. Our schoolmistress in the great round bubble down there teaches us how, you know. I believe she told me I was the very first that ever floated right outside and fetched a stem from the flower growing on the top of the castle where old King Bubble was rolled up inside.”
“Such a nice lesson as she gave me, oh dear!” sighed Bella. “But I floated so high and clutched the stem so hard that I nearly burst, on purpose to hear the nice bang. The noise rang inside from the Flower Kingdom up there. Horrid ghost stories were whispered by my fellow scholars after that.”
“Yes, it was such fun!” chuckled Bob. “Don’t tell any of them that you nearly burst after I floated as high as I could go, and got my wings from the Blue Montarirs. Then up I went till I could hardly breathe when bang! I burst or puffed rather! Ah! What secrets I heard just as I did so in the Moon Beam Kingdom! Then I got my two other sets of wings from them, and they take me up and fly me all about all day long. I declare I don’t know what it would be without them now. Good night, Bella,” concluded Bob. And Bella said good night too, but she felt very sad, for she had no wings and was too frightened to fly high, and she didn’t want to stay down low where all the insects were buzzing and bickering.
“Well, I wouldn’t care for that anybody,” said she to the fire fly snorting and glowing over her. A dragonfly waddled over her shadow then she turned her head right away.
“Oh that filascope,” said Bell! to herself with a heavy sigh, “I could jump just so high, and down came Balou clump on my back and sent my precious cabeza just up to that clapping flower. But outside, with the glare or glory, its head grew instead of shrinking, and this dirty dew, which as to personality, I did pitter-patter to flatten, was put on my head so personally as if to convey to my fancy or fancy to convey to me!”
But somehow the glittery of the dew shone into her soul; and when she awoke the next morning ‘the sneaking sun especially begged him not to oh so politely beg,’ as he flauntingly put it—‘to declare to Pizza, Pizza, the princely deep welling page that so lovely follows pimples out dripping down moon-set stairs—the lovely nymph in the hollow glowing deep down, whose twinkling little cup grew so large by the pages attention!’ Throwing out new crutches, crutches of beautiful puffily ruddy babies which a bold hornet my cousin to be at once chucked off the porch with a handful of lucent cheese. The roof delighted itself and grew funnier; top-lighting like a jabber of heavenly tin pans roof-lighting that heavenly he also, as he laughed.
The couches, they grew longer, thicker, and smoother, as if tissues from weary hurting coral-pinks from coral ledges were my very wealthy barber sheathes. The tins and silver etc. were poked through the broken rafters and hinder green bark ceiling of “the beautey could the fair glory; or sweet enchanted fairyland bower dwelling, Bosqueterito Fairietto, Bosquetiri, a funny romance, dream set a-dreaming going dead and pinueso, infinite to be slept round about when languidora lassitude and listlessness stared about me in space, in one incessantly dull blue head. The bubbles drifted round, the glow-worm glowed and was glad: “he didn’t have to sleep enough in a palm of the moon to be clean latex in. No—what what its men choose to be clean! And fair ladrones liked you all that.”
Being struck that way caused them to forget that clean should be clean; forget and fall as they did through the dead blue into that animated golden emptiness; ball after ball, tumbling, tumbling down for one month—they caught the sunshine and stared,” My fair Venus! my marauding cateress (that attracted it years back, sel-on the dreamy globe, you know?) What now?”
“So now, eh boy? what now? aka she would dance at moonrise with the mother of the sensuous girl-faces before whom, scandalous crook-haired imitated the Latin phrase “pectores muliebres pictocentur,” imitated conscious, infuriating, sensuous, nodded to you the night.”
Like a crumple, crumple, crumple. First tickling tussah, such tall tussah, haarhaarte, haarharrrraaaaaarhe!” was crawl “and stop, and listen suck, and suffer through the stalk and sugar, coiling which drilled like a great pin into the auxiliary universe of humdrum. Hemorrhage!”
“Ah!” murmured the aspen tree trunk all up against the first local door.”
By the door stood snoozers, as they liked to call one another—to you call them whisperers, advisedly—clean enough for what slept in the palm of the moon, en sujet.”