Behind the next desk sat a lizard, but it was so large it was more like
an alligator, only with a less unpleasant expression about the mouth.
'Speak to him,' said the pig, as the lizard leaned forward on his front
paws like a draper's assistant when he says, 'What's the next article?'
'I don't like to,' said the little girl.
'Nonsense, you little duffer!' said Billy kindly; 'he won't eat you.'
'Are you sure?' said the little girl very earnestly.
Then Billy said, 'Look here, I'm a King, and so I've got a situation.
Are you a Queen?'
'My name's Eliza Macqueen,' said the little girl. 'I suppose that's near
enough.'
'Well, then,' said Billy to the lizard, 'will she do?'
'Perfectly, I should say,' replied the lizard, with a smile that did not
become him very well. 'Here is the address.' He gave it to her; it read:
'Kingdom of Allexanassa. Queen, not been out before; willing, obliging,
and anxious to learn.'
'Your kingdoms,' he added, 'are next door to each other.'
'So we shall see each other often,' said Billy. 'Cheer up! We might
travel together, perhaps.'
'No,' said the pig; 'Queens go by railway. A Queen has to begin to get
used to her train as soon as she can. Now, run along, do. My friend here
will see her off.'
'You're sure they won't eat me?' said Eliza--and Billy was certain they
wouldn't, though he didn't know why. So he said, 'Good-bye. I hope
you'll get on in your new place,' and off he went to buy a penny luggage
label at the expensive stationer's three doors down the street on the
right-hand side. And when he had addressed the label and tied it round
his neck, he posted himself honourably at the General Post-Office. The
rest of the letters in the box made a fairly comfortable bed, and Billy
fell asleep. When he awoke he was being delivered by the early morning
postman at the Houses of Parliament in the capital of Plurimiregia, and
the Houses of Parliament were just being opened for the day. The air of
Plurimiregia was clear and blue, very different from the air of
Claremont Square, Pentonville. The hills and woods round the town looked
soft and green, from the hill in the middle of the town where the
Parliament Houses stood. The town itself was small and very pretty, like
one of the towns in old illuminated books, and it had a great wall all
round it, and orange trees growing on the wall. Billy wondered whether
it was forbidden to pick the oranges.
When Parliament was opened by the footman whose business it was, Billy
said:
'Please, I've come about the place----'
'The King's or the cook's?' asked the footman.
Billy was rather angry.
'Now, do I look like a cook?' he said.
'The question is, do you look like a King?' said the footman.
'If I get the place you will be sorry for this,' said Billy.
'If you get the place you won't keep it long' said the footman. 'It's
not worth while being disagreeable; there's not time to do it properly
in. Come along in.'
Billy went along in, and the footman led him into the presence of the
Prime Minister, who was sitting with straws in his hair, wringing his
hands.
[Illustration: '"Come by post, your Lordship," said the footman.'--Page
255.]
'Come by post, your lordship,' the footman said--'from London.'
The Prime Minister left off wringing his hands, and held one of them out
to Billy. 'You will suit!' he said. 'I'll engage you in a minute. But
just pull the straws out of my hair first, will you? I only put them in
because we hadn't been able to find a suitable King, and I find straws
so useful in helping my brain to act in a crisis. Of course, once you're
engaged for the situation, no one will ask you to do anything useful.'
Billy pulled the straws out, and the Prime Minister said:
'Are they all out? Thanks. Well, now you're engaged--six months on
trial. You needn't do anything you don't want to. Now, your Majesty,
breakfast is served at nine. Let me conduct you to the Royal
apartments.'
In ten minutes Billy had come out of a silver bath filled with scented
water, and was putting on the grandest clothes he had ever seen in his
life. Everything was of thick, soft, pussy silk, and his boots had gold
heels with gold spurs on them.
For the first time in his life it was with personal pleasure, and not
from a sense of duty, that he brushed his hair and satisfied himself
that none of his nails were in mourning. Then he went to breakfast,
which was so fine that none but a French cook could have either cooked
or described it. He was a little hungry--he had had nothing to eat since
the bread and cheese at supper in Claremont Square the night before
last.
After breakfast he rode out on a white pony, a thing he might have lived
in Claremont Square for ever without doing. And he found he rode very
well. After the ride he went on the sea in a boat, and was surprised and
delighted to find that he knew how to sail as well as how to steer. In
the afternoon he was taken to a circus; and in the evening the whole
Court played blind-man's buff. A most enchanting day!
Next morning the breakfast was boiled underdone eggs and burnt herrings.
The King was too polite to make remarks about his food, but he did feel
a little disappointed.
The Prime Minister was late for breakfast and came in looking hot and
flurried, and a garland of straw was entwined in the Prime Ministerial
hair.
'Excuse my hair, sire,' he said. 'The cook left last night, but a new
one comes at noon to-day. Meantime, I have done my best.'
[Illustration: '"Excuse my hair, Sire," he said.'--Page 256.]
Billy said it was all right, and he had had an excellent breakfast. The
second day passed as happily as the first; the cook seemed to have
arrived, for the breakfast was made up for by the lunch. And Billy had
the pleasure of shooting at a target at two thousand yards with the
Lee-Metford rifle which had arrived by the same post as himself, and
hitting the bull's-eye every time.
This is really a rare thing--even when you are a King. But Billy began
to think it curious that he should never have found out before how
clever he was, and when he took down a volume of Virgil and found that
he could read it as easily as though it had been the 'Child's First
Reading-Book,' he was really astonished. So Billy said to the Prime
Minister:
'How is it I know so many things without learning them?'
'It's the rule here, sire,' said the Prime Minister. 'Kings are allowed
to know everything without learning it.'
Now, the next morning Billy woke very early, and got up and went out
into the garden, and, turning a corner suddenly, he came upon a little
person in a large white cap, with a large white apron on, in which she
was gathering sweet pot-herbs, thyme, and basil, and mint, and savory,
and sage, and marjoram. She stood up and dropped a curtsy.
'Halloa!' said Billy the King; 'who are you?'
'I'm the new cook,' said the person in the apron.
Her big flapping cap hid her face, but Billy knew her voice.
'Why,' said he, turning her face up with his hands under her chin,
'you're Eliza!'
And sure enough it was Eliza, but her round face looked very much
cleverer and prettier than it had done when he saw it last.
'Hush!' she said. 'Yes, I am. I got the place as Queen of Allexanassa,
but it was all horribly grand, and such long trains, and the crown is
awfully heavy. And yesterday morning I woke very early, and I thought
I'd just put on my old frock--mother made it for me the very last thing
before she was taken ill.'
'Don't cry,' said Billy the King gently.
'And I went out, and there was a man with a boat, and he didn't know I
was the Queen, and I got him to take me for a row on the sea, and he
told me some things.'
'What sort of things?'
'Why, about us, Billy. I suppose you're the same as I am now, and know
everything without learning it. What's Allexanassa Greek for?'
'Why, something like the Country of Changing Queens, isn't it?'
'And what does Plurimiregia mean?'
'That must mean the land of many Kings. Why?'
'Because that's what it is. They're always changing their Kings and
Queens here, for a most horrid and frightening reason, Billy. They get
them from a registry office a long way off so that they shouldn't know.
Billy, there's a dreadful dragon, and he comes once a month to be fed.
And they feed him with Kings and Queens! That's why we know everything
without learning. Because there's no time to learn in. And the dragon
has two heads, Billy--a pig's head and a lizard's head--and the pig's
head is to eat _you_ with and the lizard's head will eat _me_!'
'So they brought us here for that,' said Billy--'mean, cruel, cowardly
brutes!'
'Mother always said you could never tell what a situation was like until
you tried it,' said Eliza. 'But what are we to do? The dragon comes
to-morrow. When I heard that I asked where your kingdom was, and the
boatman showed me, and I made him land me here. So Allexanassa hasn't
got a Queen now, but Plurimiregia has got us both.'
Billy rumpled his hair with his hands.
'Oh, my cats alive!' he said, 'we must do something; but I'll tell you
what it is, Eliza. You're no end of a brick to come and tell me. You
might have got off all by yourself, and left me to the pig's head.'
'No, I mightn't,' said Eliza sharply. 'I know everything that people can
learn, the same as you, and that includes right and wrong. So you see I
_mightn't_.'
'That's true! I wonder whether our being clever would help us? Let's
take a boat and steer straight out, and take our chance. I can sail and
steer beautifully.'
'So can I,' said Eliza disdainfully; 'but, you see, it's too late for
that. Twenty-four hours before the beast comes the sea-water runs away,
and great waves of thick treacle come sweeping round the kingdoms. No
boat can live in such a sea.'
'Well, but how does the dragon get here? Is he on the island?'
'No,' said Eliza, squeezing up handfuls of herbs in her agitation till
the scent quite overpowered the scent of the honeysuckle. 'No; he comes
out of the sea. But he is very hot inside, and he melts the treacle so
that it gets quite thin, like when it runs out of a treacle-pudding, and
so he can swim in it, and he comes along to the quay, and is fed--with
_Us_.'
Billy shuddered.
'I wish we were back in Claremont Square,' said he.
'So do I, I'm sure,' said Eliza. 'Though I don't know where it is, nor
yet want to know.'
'Hush!' said Billy suddenly. 'I hear a rustling. It's the Prime
Minister, and I can hear he's got straws in his hair again, most likely
because you're disappeared, and he thinks he will have to cook the
breakfast. Meet me beside the lighthouse at four this afternoon. Hide in
this summer-house and don't come out till the coast's clear.'
He ran out and took the Prime Minister's arm.
'What is the straw for now?'
'Merely a bad habit,' said the Prime Minister wearily.
Then Billy suddenly saw, and he said:
'You're a beastly mean, cowardly sneak, and you feel it; that's what the
straws are about!'
'Your Majesty!' said the Prime Minister feebly.
'Yes,' said Billy firmly; 'you know you are. Now, I know all the laws of
Plurimiregia, and I'm going to abdicate this morning, and the next in
rank has to be King if he can't engage a fresh one. You're next in rank
to me, so by the time the dragon comes you'll be the King. I'll attend
your Coronation.'
The Prime Minister gasped, 'How did you find out?' and turned the colour
of unripe peaches.
'That's tellings,' said Billy. 'If you hadn't all been such sneaks, I
expect heaps of your Kings had sense enough to have got rid of the
dragon for you. Only I suppose you've never told them in time. Now, look
here. I don't want you to do anything except keep your mouth shut, and
let there be a boat, and no boatman, on the beach under the lighthouse
at four o'clock.'
'But the sea's all treacle.'
[Illustration: '"Speak to the dragon as soon as it arrives."' Page 263.]
'I said on the beach, not on the sea, my good straw merchant. And what I
say you've jolly well got to do. You must be there--and no one else.
If you tell a soul I'll abdicate, and where will you be then?'
'I don't know,' said the wretched Prime Minister, stooping to gather
some more straws from the strawberry bed.
'But I do,' said Billy. 'Now for breakfast.'
Before four o'clock that afternoon the Prime Minister's head was a
perfect bird's-nest of straws. But he met Billy at the appointed place,
and there was a boat--and also Eliza. Billy carried his Lee-Metford.
A wind blew from the shore, and the straws in the Prime Minister's hair
rustled like a barley-field in August.
'Now,' said Billy the King, 'my Royal Majesty commands you to speak to
the dragon as soon as it arrives, and to say that your King has
abdicated----'
'But he hasn't,' said the Prime Minister in tears.
'But he _does now_--so you won't be telling a lie. I abdicate. But I
give you my word of honour I'll turn King again as soon as I've tried my
little plan. I shall be quite in time to meet my fate--and the dragon.
Say "The King has abdicated. You'd better just look in at Allexanassa
and get the Queen, and when you call again I'll have a nice fat King
all ready for you."'
The straws trembled, and Eliza sobbed.
Billy went on; and he had never felt so truly regal as now, when he was
preparing to risk his life in order to save his subjects from the
monthly temptation to be mean and cowardly and sneakish. I think myself
it was good of Billy. He might just have abdicated and let things slide.
Some boys would have.
The sea of greeny-black treacle heaved and swelled sulkily against the
beach. The Prime Minister said:
'Very well; I'll do it. But I'd sooner die than see my King false to his
word.'
'You won't have to choose between the two,' said Billy, very pale, but
determined. 'Your King's not a hound, like--like some-people.'
And then, far away on the very edge of the green treacly sea, they saw a
squirming and a squelching and clouds of steam, and all sorts of
exciting and unpleasant things happening very suddenly and all together.
The Prime Minister covered his head with dry seaweed and said:
'That's Him.'
'That's _He_,' corrected Eliza the Queen and Billy the King in one
breath.
But the Prime Minister was long past any proper pride in his grammar.
And then, cutting its way through the thick, sticky waves of the treacle
sea, came the hot dragon, melting a way for himself as he came. And he
got nearer and nearer and bigger and bigger, and at last he came close
to the beach, snouting and snorting, and opened two great mouths in an
expecting, hungry sort of way; and when he found he was not being fed
the expression of the mouths changed to an angry and surprised question.
And one mouth was a pig's mouth and one was a lizard's.
Billy the King borrowed a pin from Eliza the Queen to stick into the
Prime Minister, who was by this time nearly buried in the seaweed which
he had been trying to arrange in his hair.
'Speak up, silly!' said His Majesty.
The Prime Minister spoke up.
'Please, sir,' he said to the two-headed dragon, 'our King has
abdicated, so we've nothing for you just now, but if you could just run
over to Allexanassa and pick up their Queen, we'll have a nice fat King
ready for you if you'll call on your way home.'
The Prime Minister shuddered as he spoke. He happened to be very fat.
The dragon did not say a word. He nodded with both his heads and grunted
with both his mouths, and turned his one tail and swam away along the
track of thin, warm treacle which he had made in swimming across the
sea.
Quick as thought, Billy the King signed to the Prime Minister and to
Eliza, and they launched the boat. Billy sprang on board and pushed off,
and it was not till the boat was a dozen yards from shore that he turned
to wave a farewell to Eliza and the Prime Minister. The latter was
indeed still on the beach, searching hopefully among the drifts and
weeds for more straws, to mark his sense of the constitutional crisis,
but Eliza had disappeared.
'Oh dear, oh dear,' said Billy the King; 'surely that brute of a Prime
Minister can't have killed her right off, so as to have her ready for
the dragon when he comes back. Oh, my dear little Eliza!'
'I'm here,' said a thick voice.
And, sure enough, there was Eliza, holding on to the gunwale of the
boat and swimming heavily in the warm treacle. Nearly choked with it,
too, for she had been under more than once.
Billy hastened to haul her aboard, and, though she was quite brown and
very, very sticky, the moment she was safe in the boat he threw his arms
round her and said:
'Dear, darling Eliza, you're the dearest, bravest girl in the world. If
we ever get out of this you'll marry me, won't you? There's no one in
the world like you. Say you will.'
'Of course I will,' said Eliza, still spluttering through the treacle.
'There's no one in the world like you, either.'
'Right! Then, if that's so, you steer and I'll sail, and we'll get the
better of the beast yet,' said Billy.
And he set the sail, and Eliza steered as well as she could in her
treacly state.
About the middle of the channel they caught up with the dragon. Billy
took up his Lee-Metford and fired its eight bullets straight into the
dragon's side. You have no idea how the fire spurted out through the
bullet-holes. But the wind from shore had caught the sails, and the boat
was now going very much faster than the dragon, who found the
bullet-holes annoying, and had slowed up to see what was the matter.
'Good-bye, you dear, brave Eliza,' said Billy the King. '_You're_ all
right, anyhow.'
And, holding his reloaded Lee-Metford rifle high over his head, he
plunged into the treacly sea and swam back towards the dragon. It is
very difficult to shoot straight when you are swimming, especially in
nearly boiling treacle, but His Majesty King Billy managed to do it. He
sent his eight bullets straight into the dragon's heads, and the huge
monster writhed and wriggled and squirmed and squawked, all over the sea
from end to end, till at last it floated lifeless on the surface of the
clear, warm treacle, and stretched its wicked paws out, and shut its
wicked eyes, all four of them, and died. The lizard's eyes shut last.
Then Billy began to swim for dear life towards the shore of
Plurimiregia, and the treacle was so hot that if he hadn't been a King
he would have been boiled. But now that the dreadful dragon was cold in
death there was nothing to keep the treacle sea thin and warm, and it
began to thicken so fast that swimming was very difficult indeed. If you
don't understand this, you need only ask the attendants at your nearest
swimming-baths to fill the baths with treacle instead of water, and you
will very soon comprehend how it was that Billy reached the shore of his
kingdom quite exhausted and almost speechless.
The Prime Minister was there. He had fetched a whole truss of straw when
he thought Billy's plan had failed, and that the dragon would eat him as
the next in rank, and he wanted to do the thing thoroughly; and when he
warmly embraced the treacly King, Billy became so covered with straws
that he hardly knew himself. He pulled himself together, however, enough
to withdraw his resignation, and then looked out over the sea. In
mid-channel lay the dead dragon, and far in the distance he could see
the white sails of the boat nearing the shores of Allexanassa.
'And what are we to do now?' asked the Prime Minister.
'Have a bath,' said the King. 'The dragon's dead, and I'll fetch Eliza
in the morning. They won't hurt her over there now the dragon's killed.'
'_They_ won't hurt her,' said the Prime Minister. 'It's the treacle.
Allexanassa is an island. The dragon brought the treacle up by his
enchantments, and now there is no one to take it away again. You'll
never get a boat to live in a sea like that--never.'
'Won't I?' said Billy. 'I'm cleverer than you.'
But, all the same, he didn't quite see his way to sailing a boat in that
sea, and with a sad and aching heart he went back to the palace to the
silver bath. The treacle and straws took hours to wash off, and after
that he was so tired that he did not want any supper, which was just as
well, because there was no one to cook it. Tired as he was, Billy slept
very badly. He woke up again and again to wonder what had become of his
brave little friend, and to wish that he could have done something to
prevent her being carried away in that boat; but, think as he might, he
failed to see that he could have done any differently. And his heart
sank, for, in spite of his bold words to the Prime Minister, he had no
more idea than you have how to cross the sea of thick treacle that lay
between his kingdom and Allexanassa. He invented steamships with red-hot
screws and paddle-wheels all through his dreams, and when he got up in
the morning he looked out of his window on the dark sea and longed for a
good, gray, foamy, salt, tumbling sea like we have at home in
England, no matter how high the waves and the winds might be. But the
wind had fallen, and the dark brown sea looked strangely calm.
[Illustration: 'The two skated into each other's arms.'--Page 271.]
Hastily snatching a dozen peaches out of the palace garden by way of
breakfast, Billy the King hurried to the beach by the lighthouse. No
heaving of the treacle sea broke the smooth line of it against the
beach. Billy looked--looked again, swallowed the last peach, stone and
all, and tore back to the town.
He rushed into the chief ironmonger's and bought a pair of skates and a
gimlet. In less time than I can write it he had scurried back to the
beach, bored holes in his gold heels, fastened on the skates, and was
skating away over the brown sea towards Allexanassa. For the treacle,
heated to boiling-point by the passing of the dragon, had now grown
cold, and, of course, it was now _toffee_! Far off, Eliza had had the
same idea as soon as she saw the toffee, and, of course, as Queen of
Allexanassa, she could skate beautifully. So the two skated into each
other's arms somewhere near the middle of the channel between the two
islands.
They stood telling each other how happy they were for a few moments, or
it may have been a few hours; and when they turned to go back to
Plurimiregia they found that the toffee-ice of the treacle sea was black
with crowds of skaters--for the Allexanassians and the Plurimiregians
had found out the wonderful truth, and were hurrying across to pay
visits to their friends and relations in the opposite islands. Near the
shore the toffee was hidden by troops of children, who had borrowed the
family hammers and were chipping into the solid toffee and eating the
flakes of it as they splintered off.
People were pointing out to each other the spot where the dragon had
sunk, and when they perceived Billy the King and Eliza the Queen they
sent up a shout that you could have heard miles out at sea--if there had
been any sea--which, of course, there wasn't. The Prime Minister had
lost no time in issuing a proclamation setting forth Billy's splendid
conduct in ridding the country of the dragon, and all the populace were
in a frenzy of gratitude and loyalty.
Billy turned on a little tap inside his head by some means which I
cannot describe to you, and a bright flood of cleverness poured through
his brain.
'After all,' he said to Eliza, 'they were going to give us to the
dragon to save their own lives. It's bad, I know. But I don't know
that's it's worse than people who let other people die of lead-poisoning
because they want a particular glaze on their dinner-plates, or let
people die of phosphorus-poisoning so that they may get matches at six
boxes a penny. We're as well off here as in England.'
'Yes,' said Eliza.
So they agreed to stay and go on being King and Queen, on condition that
the Prime Minister consented to give up straws altogether, even in
moments of crisis.
'I will, your Majesties,' he said, adding, with a polite bow, 'I shall
not need a single straw under your Majesty's able kingship.'
And all the people cheered like mad.
Eliza and Billy were married in due course. The kingdoms are now
extremely happy. Both are governed by Billy, who is a very good King
because he knows so much. Eliza got him to change the law about Queens
knowing everything, because she wanted her husband to be cleverer than
she was. But Billy didn't want to make laws to turn his Eliza stupid, so
he just changed the law--only a little bit--so that the King knows
everything a man ought to know, and the Queen knows everything that
ought to be known by a woman. So that's all right.
Exploring expeditions were fitted out to find the edge of the toffee. It
was found to stand up in cliffs two hundred feet high, overhanging the
real, live, salt-watery sea. The King had ships built at once to sail on
the real sea and carry merchandise to other lands. And so Allexanassa
and Plurimiregia grew richer and richer every day. The merchandise, of
course, is toffee, and half the men in the kingdoms work in the great
toffee-mines. All the toffee you buy in shops comes from there. And the
reason why some of the cheaper kinds you buy are so gritty is, I need
hardly say, because the toffee-miners will not remember, before they go
down into the mines, to wipe their muddy boots on the doormats provided
by Billy the King, with the Royal Arms in seven colours on the middle of
each mat.