The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle Read Online Free PDF

very hard
for them to lie still doing nothing. But you needn't worry about him. He
will be all right."
    Then we went back again to the parlor and my mother and father kept him
playing the flute till after ten o'clock.
    Although my parents both liked the Doctor tremendously from the first
moment that they saw him, and were very proud to have him come and play
to us (for we were really terribly poor) they did not realize then what
a truly great man he was one day to become. Of course now, when almost
everybody in the whole world has heard about Doctor Dolittle and his
books, if you were to go to that little house in Puddleby where my
father had his cobbler's shop you would see, set in the wall over
the old-fashioned door, a stone with writing on it which says: "JOHN
DOLITTLE, THE FAMOUS NATURALIST, PLAYED THE FLUTE IN THIS HOUSE IN THE
YEAR 1839."
    I often look back upon that night long, long ago. And if I close my eyes
and think hard I can see that parlor just as it was then: a funny little
man in coat-tails, with a round kind face, playing away on the flute
in front of the fire; my mother on one side of him and my father on the
other, holding their breath and listening with their eyes shut; myself,
with Jip, squatting on the carpet at his feet, staring into the coals;
and Polynesia perched on the mantlepiece beside his shabby high hat,
gravely swinging her head from side to side in time to the music. I see
it all, just as though it were before me now.
    And then I remember how, after we had seen the Doctor out at the front
door, we all came back into the parlor and talked about him till it was
still later; and even after I did go to bed (I had never stayed up so
late in my life before) I dreamed about him and a band of strange
clever animals that played flutes and fiddles and drums the whole night
through.

The Seventh Chapter. Shellfish Talk
*
    THE next morning, although I had gone to bed so late the night before,
I was up frightfully early. The first sparrows were just beginning to
chirp sleepily on the slates outside my attic window when I jumped out
of bed and scrambled into my clothes.
    I could hardly wait to get back to the little house with the big
garden—to see the Doctor and his private zoo. For the first time in
my life I forgot all about breakfast; and creeping down the stairs on
tip-toe, so as not to wake my mother and father, I opened the front door
and popped out into the empty, silent street.
    When I got to the Doctor's gate I suddenly thought that perhaps it was
too early to call on any one: and I began to wonder if the Doctor would
be up yet. I looked into the garden. No one seemed to be about. So I
opened the gate quietly and went inside.
    As I turned to the left to go down a path between some hedges, I heard a
voice quite close to me say,
    "Good morning. How early you are!"
    I turned around, and there, sitting on the top of a privet hedge, was
the gray parrot, Polynesia.
    "Good morning," I said. "I suppose I am rather early. Is the Doctor
still in bed?"
    "Oh no," said Polynesia. "He has been up an hour and a half. You'll find
him in the house somewhere. The front door is open. Just push it and go
in, He is sure to be in the kitchen cooking breakfast—or working in his
study. Walk right in. I am waiting to see the sun rise. But upon my word
I believe it's forgotten to rise. It is an awful climate, this. Now if
we were in Africa the world would be blazing with sunlight at this hour
of the morning. Just see that mist rolling over those cabbages. It is
enough to give you rheumatism to look at it. Beastly climate—Beastly!
Really I don't know why anything but frogs ever stay in England—Well,
don't let me keep you. Run along and see the Doctor."
    "Thank you," I said. "I'll go and look for him."
    When I opened the front door I could smell bacon frying, so I made my
way to the kitchen. There I discovered a large kettle boiling away over
the fire and some bacon and eggs in a dish upon the hearth. It seemed
to me