But instead she found herself in a forest full of
tall thick trees. The little green hill could not be found anywhere. "This
is so strange!" said Annette to herself. "I wonder what would happen
if I went back through the bushes to where I just came from. Perhaps I would
find myself in another place I haven't seen before. But how will I get back
where I started from? Oh, and another strange thing! All these trees have doors
in them! I wonder who lives there." She walked to the nearest tree,
knocked twice, and waited. Nobody answered. She knocked again. Still nobody
came. Annette was too well-mannered to try to open the door and go in, as
Goldilocks would have. Besides there were plenty of other doors to knock on.
But just as she was heading for the next door, she heard the first one fly
open, and a cross voice call out, "Hey! Wait a minuet! Why are you
knocking on my door?" Annette turned around, and saw a creature very like
the ones she had seen, but without a tail, and with a very angry face, angrier
than the face of the unhappy quaver she had met. Before she had time to answer
his question, another door flew open, and another creature of the same type
came out, saying, "What's all this noise about? I'm trying to have a
rest!"
"What do you want a rest for?" asked the
first. "The stupid things won't stay awake while you're talking to
them." Then he pointed to Annette, who had not understood his last remark
at all. "This," he announced, "is a little girl called
Annette."
"How do you know?" she asked.
"Ah, hah! I know you very well. You're the
little girl who plays me as if I'm a quaver in that Study in A minor that you
play."
"I've just been to see the quavers," said
Annette, trying to change the subject.
"Quavers! Hah! Stupid things!" said the
second creature, in a very crotchety voice. "We're twice as good as they
are!"
"Then you must be crotchets," said
Annette.
"Of course we are! Wake up, child! Don't be so adagio!"
"He means your mind should be a little more allegro," explained the other.
Annette had trouble understanding this, so she just
said, "If there are crotchets and quavers here, then I suppose there are
minims too."
"Minims! Hah! Stupid things!" said the
crotchet. "They think they're twice as good as we are! Silly, empty-headed
creatures!"
"The same goes for semi-breves," added the
other. "They don't even have a stem. And they think they're four times as good as us!"
"But they are
four times as long!" protested Annette, thinking these creatures were very
unfair in their attitudes to other notes.
At this, both angry faces turned a kind of purple
colour, and, when at last one of them spoke, he said, "I can make myself
as long as I choose. Wait here while I go and get my hat." And he
disappeared into his tree-trunk house.
"What is he doing?" wondered Annette.
"How can a hat make him longer?" She soon found out, when he returned
with a hat shaped like this - Ç - on
his head.
"There!
Now, anyone playing me has to hold me longer - to pause, in other words."
But
a pause means you hold the note about half as long again," said Annette,
who had had a lesson about pauses the day before. "That means you're not
even as long as a minim."
"She's right you know, Crabby," said the
other crotchet, while the one called Crabby again turned purple with anger.
"However, I have something which will make me as long as I want to
be." He walked into his house and soon returned with a little box in his
hand. Annette and Crabby Crotchet, who had just thrown his hat to the ground in
disgust, watched while Chris Crotchet, for that was his name, opened the box
and took out a little black dot, which he placed before his face. "If I
put this on my head like a hat," he said, "it makes me staccato, but
if I put it next to my head, it makes me half as long again."
"But that's no longer than I was!"
interrupted Crabby.
"Wait a minuet!" returned Chris. "I
haven't finished yet. Now, I take another dot and put it beside the first.
There!"
"But," said Crabby, "that means you
add on half the value of the first dot, which makes you one and three-quarter
beats long. You're still not as long as a minim."
"Wait, wait, wait!" said Chris, but
starting to look a little worried. "I can add more. I've got hundreds and
hundreds of dots in this box, and each one makes me a little longer." And
he began to add the dots, one by one, in a straight line in front of his face,
while Crabby stood adding up the time value each time a dot was added.
"One and seven eighths beats. One and fifteen
sixteenths beats. One and thirty-one thirty-secondths beats . . . and so on. Poor Chris kept adding dots
and adding more dots until he was only a few hundredths and then a few
thousandths and even a few millionths of a beat away from the value of a minim.
He was still adding dots furiously and getting purpler and purpler when Annette
decided she had better go before he exploded.
"I wonder if he'll ever get to be worth two beats," she thought to herself as she heard Crabby's monotonous string of monstrous figures fading into the distance.