the next time the tourists came, and Johnnie let off the colored
fire, the dragon said shyly: "Excuse my troubling you, but could you
bring me a little more bread and milk?"

So Johnnie arranged that people should go around with carts every day to
collect the children's bread and milk for the dragon. The children were
fed at the town's expense--on whatever they liked; and they ate nothing
but cake and buns and sweet things, and they said the poor dragon was
very welcome to their bread and milk.

Now, when Johnnie had been mayor ten years or so he married Tina, and on
their wedding morning they went to see the dragon. He had grown quite
tame, and his rusty plates had fallen off in places, and underneath he
was soft and furry to stroke. So now they stroked him.

And he said, "I don't know how I could ever have liked eating anything
but bread and milk. I _am_ a tame dragon now, aren't I?" And when they
said that yes, he was, the dragon said: "I am so tame, won't you undo
me?" And some people would have been afraid to trust him, but Johnnie
and Tina were so happy on their wedding day that they could not believe
any harm of anyone in the world. So they loosened the chains, and the
dragon said: "Excuse me a moment, there are one or two little things I
should like to fetch," and he moved off to those mysterious steps and
went down them, out of sight into the darkness. And as he moved, more
and more of his rusty plates fell off.

In a few minutes they heard him clanking up the steps. He brought
something in his mouth--it was a bag of gold.

"It's no good to me," he said. "Perhaps you might find it useful." So
they thanked him very kindly.

"More where that came from," said he, and fetched more and more and
more, till they told him to stop. So now they were rich, and so were
their fathers and mothers. Indeed, everyone was rich, and there were no
more poor people in the town. And they all got rich without working,
which is very wrong; but the dragon had never been to school, as you
have, so he knew no better.

And as the dragon came out of the dungeon, following Johnnie and Tina
into the bright gold and blue of their wedding day, he blinked his eyes
as a cat does in the sunshine, and he shook himself, and the last of his
plates dropped off, and his wings with them, and he was just like a
very, very extra-sized cat. And from that day he grew furrier and
furrier, and he was the beginning of all cats. Nothing of the dragon