One sunny morning, while Zara was walking towards her school, she noticed a peculiar small bridge just off the main path. Being a curious girl, she decided to inspect it, hoping to discover some grand adventure or at least a pretty view. But as she approached the bridge, she saw something that made her stop in her tracks.
A creature was sitting on the bridge, GIGGLING! Yes, just sitting and laughing to himself in the most annoying way. So, being a girl who was always polite and fair to others no matter how they looked or acted, she stopped on one side of the bridge and shouted out pleasantly: “Good morning.”
The creature stopped giggling, but feeling it was quite rude to discuss with one another across a bridge while a respectable girl stood waiting for him, he got up, and, walking to the centre of the bridge, bowed his head respectfully. When glancing slightly upward, Zara ascertained that it was a troll of the very best kind—with greenish-gray skin, long hair, and very big eyes. This particular troll wore a gold locket around his neck and shoes with gold buckles. So she hoped he was a well-behaved one.
“May I cross the bridge?” she asked, as politely as she could.
“It is our custom,” said the troll, whose name was Wilbur, “when any one wants to cross, to ask him for something to eat or drink. We trolls rarely eat; all we drink is dew out of the beer-taps in the gardens.”
“Oh, I don’t want any breakfast—you are very kind,” she replied, “but I am afraid I shall be late.”
Then Wilbur couldn’t think of anything to say, for all the answers a troll could suggest seemed either rude or stupid, and he never wanted to appear so before a girl like Zara.
But she began to giggle—to herself, of course; for that would never do.
“Please tell me,” she continued, “why you laugh so. What amuses you?”
Wilbur opened his honest, big eyes. He did want to ask her something, but all trolls have very busy tongues, and it is proved scientifically that they cannot talk unless they curl theirs about the roof of their mouths before saying a single word.
So it took him some time to arrange his tongue satisfactorily, and this was what she heard: “Oh, I was laughing because I was thinking the way I gaze at you so soberly and the way you giggle so self-satisfied reminded me of a hen that saw a cow walking gravely towards the pond, and to amuse itself began flapping its wings and going hiss-hiss-hiss till the cow bent its head down and prepared to charge the hen in self-defence. You knew my last remark had awakened your merriment simply because hordes of happy human beings did something of the sort in their Timothade Course or examinations—drawing suddenly and gaily in a huge wigwam, wont tinder to do under the hazel-tree instead of some more serious object, with tea and bread and butter for supper, moistening their throats and sweetening sleep in other continents.”
Zara laughed again, this time most heartily, for she knew this was one of the troll’s silly tricks.
“Oh, I see!” she said; “that reminds me of Professor Bloomer saying that curiosity crept into the Ark, and now walks up and down our talking-mills, questioning. But never mind that now; the chief point is that I am late for school this lovely morning, and it’s going to be a most exciting day.”
“What sort of day?” asked Wilbur.
“We are going to make our classmates talk.” And Zara told him how each pupil was to pick out a partner who gave the most public recitation, and then sit in the middle aisle as they did in church while the rest were to deliver compulsory exercises, allowing their partners, whom they might indiscriminately select, to talk for five minutes only on them—and this was for every one of the number present. “So you see,” she added, laughingly, “how confused those who have rampageous tongues will be while their examiner sits idly gazing into space in an improper manner, ignoring their sentences entirely, because they are not to ask a single question, even if he had brains, besides eyes, to study them.”
“I understand you perfectly,” said the troll, delighted. “I excused myself attending; but oh, dear! I fear you will forget to reply.”
“Oh no, I won’t; but I don’t scare up nasty holes and say nasty things when people mention disagreeable subjects, like reading at church. Now may I cross?”
So she crossed the bridge safely, and turning to wave her thanks to the troll, saw him gazing earnestly into the sky. Zara did the same for a minute, without seeing anything but blue and white; but then she thought it only the chatty Professor Curds from the other side of the world. Nevertheless, she thought it very nice of the troll to keep up his side of the conversation throughout. No one could catch this latter literally, of course, as he talked in his baritone in his gentle, stupid, unsuspecting manner simply when she passed, and whenever Wilbur saw people more anxious to join earnestly in anything than listen in that listless way to the lectures given across country in an eccentrically juvenile manner.
Zara thought as she went along that it was surely the cleverest thing she ever heard, except the teaching of another troll on one occasion.