"Hooray! We're through the wetful fogs

Where the elephant scared the fretful frogs!"

 

There was a magnificent sunset in the sky just then, and it cheered the Pinkies and gave them renewed strength. Away they hastened across the pink fields to the Pink City, where all the Pink people who had been left behind ran out to welcome them home again.

 

Trot and Button-Bright, with Cap'n Bill and Rosalie the Witch, went to the humble³ palace, where they had a simple supper of coarse food and slept upon hard beds. In the houses of the City, however, there was much feasting and merrymaking, and it seemed to Trot that the laws of the country which forbade the Queen from enjoying all the good things the people did were decidedly wrong and needed changing.

 

The next morning Rosalie said to the little girl, "Will you make Tourmaline the Queen again when you go away?"

 

"I'll send for her and see about it," replied Trot.

 

But when Tourmaline arrived at the palace, dressed all in lovely, fluffy⁴ robes and with a dainty pink plume⁵ in her pink hair, she begged most earnestly not to be made the Queen again.

 

"I'm having a good time just now after years of worry and uncomfortable living in this uncomfortable old hut of a palace," said the poor girl, "so it would be cruel for you to make me the servant of the people again and condemn⁶ me to want and misery⁷."

 

"That seems reason'ble," replied Trot thoughtfully.

分享到：