act, where they could
find any Bell-person kind enough to give them board and lodging. And
every one was surprised at the increased loudness in the voices of these
hospitable bells. For, of course, the Bell-people from the belfry did
their best to help in the housework as polite guests should, and always
added their voices to those of their hosts on all occasions when
bell-talk was called for. And the seven big beautiful bells in the
belfry were left hollow and dark and quite empty, except for the
clappers who did not care about the comforts of a home.

Now of course a good house does not remain empty long, especially when
there is no rent to pay, and in a very short time the seven bells all
had tenants, and they were all the kind of folk that no respectable
Bell-people would care to be acquainted with.

They had been turned out of other bells--cracked bells and broken bells,
the bells of horses that had been lost in snowstorms or of ships that
had gone down at sea. They hated work, and they were a glum, silent,
disagreeable people, but as far as they could be pleased about anything
they were pleased to live in bells that were never rung, in houses where
there was nothing to do. They sat hunched up under the black domes of
their houses, dressed in darkness and cobwebs, and their only pleasure
was idleness, their only feasts the thick dusty silence that lies heavy
in all belfries where the bells never ring. They hardly ever spoke even
to each other, and in the whispers that good Bell-people talk in among
themselves, and that no one can hear but the bat whose ear for music is
very fine and who has himself a particularly high voice, and when they
did speak they quarrelled.

And when at last the bells _were_ rung for the birth of a Princess the
wicked Bell-people were furious. Of course they had to _ring_--a bell
can't help that when the rope is pulled--but their voices were so ugly
that people were quite shocked.

'What poor taste our ancestors must have had,' they said, 'to think
these were good bells!'

(You remember the bells had not rung for nearly two hundred years.)

'Dear me,' said the King to the Queen, 'what odd ideas people had in the
old days. I always understood that these bells had beautiful voices.'

'They're quite hideous,' said the Queen. And so they were. Now that
night the lazy Bell-folk came down out of the belfry full of anger
against the Princess whose birth had disturbed their idleness. There i