“I’m very sorry;” but the Princess said—
“Dear, he deserved it. And being a post is not painful. Let us never
think of him again. I have learned many things since I came here. I
have something to break to you. Do you think you can bear it?”
“I can bear anything now,” said he, holding her in his arms, and
kissing her again, because she was so very dear.
“Well,” said Perihelia, “I am Princess of the Sun, and if I marry you,
my own dear King, I shan’t be able to help colouring your pretty white
kingdom a little. Just soft sweet colours, dear, and not an inch of
plush. We’ll make a law against _that_ the very first thing. And you
shall go on teaching your people to be good, and I’ll try to teach them
to be happy. Do you think I can?”
The White King smiled. “You’ve taught _me_,” he said; “but now, before
we do anything for the people, let’s go and get married, and we can
begin to make the new laws directly we’ve finished breakfast. We shall
just have time to be married if we go off to church at once.”
So they went off, and woke up the Archbishop, and were married, and the
Archbishop came home with them to breakfast, and afterwards they began
to make laws as hard as they could.
The first law was “There is to be no Plush at all in this kingdom.”
And now Albanatolia is the most beautiful country in the world, all
soft sweet colours and clear pearly white; and the Queen Perihelia has
taught the people how to be happy, so the King has very little work
to do, for they are good almost without his interfering at all. It
is a lovely country. I hope you will go there some day. I went there
once but they would not let me stay because I had a black coat on, and
gaiters; and the sight of these clothes made the people so unhappy that
the Queen asked me as a private and personal favour to go away, and
never to come back unless I could come dressed in something like the
colours of the clouds at dawn. I have never been able to manage this,
and, anyway, I don’t suppose I could find the way there now. But, if
you could get the proper dress, perhaps you could?