“I will make you a dress more beautiful than silk,” said the Spider, “if you will take me along to see the Emperor!”
“And I could take the toadstool for a parasol, if you wouldn’t mind having tea somewhere else,” Nikko said. “But alas! what should I do for a pearly throne?”
“Well, now you mention it,” chimed in the Snail, “if I could eat enough tea and toast I might grow big enough to carry you, and my house would make a pretty good throne. Yes, perhaps I’ll carry you, if you will get me the tea and toast; for I must confess I should love to see the Emperor!”
As fast as her bare feet could carry her, Nikko ran home, took all the tea out of the canister, baked six batches of bread, put them in a bucket and carried them back to the forest. She then laid a fire of sticks and began to make toast so ambitiously that the scent of it could be smelled all over China from the Great Wall at one end to the Yellow Sea at the other. And above the fire hung the bucket, filled with water for the Snail’s tea.
The Snail filled his acorn-cup a million times that day and ate toast till the sun went down. Then he rested for a few minutes, but when night came he began again and you could hear him munching in the dark.
In the morning he was so big that he had to descend from the toadstool for fear of breaking its stem. By evening he was as big as a football, and by the next morning as big as the biggest snow-ball you ever made, and before the third day, he was big enough to carry Nikko on his back.
Meanwhile the Spider had been very busy. He had spun a wonderful silken gown, all decked with dew-drops and inwrought with the wings of butterflies, and when he had watched Nikko put it on and made sure that it fitted perfectly, he fastened himself in front for a brooch. Nikko was delighted. But suddenly she exclaimed:
“Alas, I have no shoes! The grand ladies all wear tiny beaded shoes. What shall I do with my feet?”
“Oh, never mind your feet,” replied the Snail. “You’ll be riding all the time so you can keep them tucked under your gown.”
So they picked the scarlet toadstool for a parasol, set Nikko a-top the Snail with her feet well hidden, and started on their way.
The procession was almost over; only a few stragglers hurried along the highroad, and they all overtook poor Nikko, for a Snail can go just half a mile an hour and no faster. A haughty four-in-hand of peacocks passed her at a strut, tails spread and crests erect; a team of pig-tailed Chinamen running for all they were worth and jolting their mistress till she was dizzy, almost stumbled headlong over the Snail; four turbaned slaves overtook her and then looked back open-mouthed at the beautiful lady; and a spotted leopard, loping in front of a gorgeous princess’ throne, shied in terror when the Snail happened to stick out his eyes, and the leopard, the throne and the gorgeous princess were wrecked in the muddy water of the rice-field beside the road.