The Adventures of King Midas. Lynne Banks Reid

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      His face broke into a grin. “This takes some getting used to!” he exclaimed. And then he did another silly thing. Without thinking, he bent his head to smell the flower.

      Of course it had no scent. That had disappeared as soon as the rose became gold.

      The King became very still for a moment. Roses were his great love … But then he pushed away the tiny regret that had come into his mind. He threw away the golden rose and, with his magic hands firmly out of the way, smelt some others to make himself feel all right again.

      The next thing he thought of was some cash that was in his pocket – common coins of the realm, made of copper and bronze and nickel. He would change those into gold at once – gold like the pirates in his old storybooks used to have – doubloons! And he reached into the pocket of his jacket.

      Instantly a heavy weight fell onto his shoulders so that he was almost pressed to the ground.

      “Good heavens! The jacket’s turned into gold now! I keep forgetting!”

      He had to break the buttons away to get the jacket off, and as it lay all stiff and cold in the grass, gleaming like a suit of armour, the King almost thought for a moment that it had been nicer before.

      He shook himself, feeling the chill breeze without his dear old tweed jacket, his favourite gardening one that he’d had since his wife’s time, and exclaimed aloud, “But how absurd! Now I have all the gold I want, I can buy a new jacket for every day of the year! But of course,” he added thoughtfully, “I shall have to get someone to dress me. H’m. Wonder what old Biffpot’s going to think about all this?”

      It was the first time he had considered what anybody else might think, and his thoughts flew to Delia.

      “Now she’ll see! Now she’ll understand!” he thought gleefully, and looked around for something to turn into gold as a special present for her.

      In the next section of the garden was a fountain with a statue in the middle of it, of a little girl holding a fish. It was made of marble.

      “I’ll turn that statue into a golden doll for my little girl,” he thought. As he reached his hand through the spray to touch the statue, all the drops of water turned into gold too, and fell with little splashes into the pool, where they sank to the bottom and lay among the pebbles.

      Somehow this thrilled the King. “It works for little things, too!” he thought. “Little, ordinary things!” For pure fun, he touched a stone and saw it glitter among its dull fellows on the path, and then turned a humble garden spade into a magnificent artifact of gold that any museum would give its eye-teeth to own.

      “Hooray!” the King cried. “I love this! This is even more fun than the trees! If that old spade were only alive, how proud it would be in the tool-shed among all the other plain ones!” It was a funny thought, and he laughed aloud.

      He was just reaching for the golden statue when a small bird alighted on the rim of the fountain for a drink. It was bright yellow and the king recognised it as one of the palace canaries that must have escaped. Delia was very fond of her birds and the King knew that recapturing this one would please her, so he chirruped to the canary, and held out his finger for the little tame thing to hop onto.

      It was clearly tired of being free. Trustingly, it hopped.

      Hardly had its feet touched Midas’s finger before it fell like a stone into his hand, turned to gold, right to its tipmost wing-feather. It was a very unpleasant feeling, like witnessing sudden death.

      The King was dismayed. “Poor little thing!” he cried. “I didn’t mean it! – Oh, please come back to life – what will Delia say?”

      But СКАЧАТЬ