One blowing autumn afternoon the King was out walking alone with Princess Lily. He was plodding slowly over the damp fields and footpaths of his demesne, with little Lily’s small hand gripped tight in his big one and little Lily’s little legs hurrying along beside his large ones, two steps to one. They were talking happily together of this, that, and the other, and watching the round sun putting on his gorgeous red clothes before he went to bed. But when silence fell between them, the King began to puzzle to himself over the strange alteration in Aunt Gamboy’s behaviour and he could not help thinking how pleasant it would be, when the walk was over, to come back to the Castle and find her waiting with the China tea made ready and the Royal Slippers warming by the fire; for she had taken lately to drinking tea with him. But Princess Lily had a bright little picture in her head of the warm Nursery, with the blinds drawn and the fire flickering away behind the guard, and Indian tea and thick bread and butter with the Royal Nurse. “How nice it will be,” she thought, “not to have that horrid Aunt Gamboy fussing in and out, making draughts and banging the door. She always stays downstairs now, thank goodness!”

They walked on in silence. Suddenly Princess Lily stopped dead, threw up her hands, and screamed a great scream. Her eyes and her mouth opened wider and wider and rounder and rounder; once, twice, three times she screamed aloud. Then she raised herself up on tiptoe and down she plopped backwards in a dead faint. The poor King was astonished. He snatched her up in his arms and turned to see what it could be that had frightened her so much. He looked all round, but there was nobody in sight. He looked all round again. Still he saw nothing. He looked all round again. And then he threw back his head and began to laugh. For lolloping along by the side of the path, believe me, in the clumsiest and most ridiculous way imaginable, was a great grey-green toad.

Lollopy-lump, lollopy-lump, lollopy-lump!

But then the King suddenly understood that it was this which had frightened poor little Lily and sent her off a-fainting. He stopped laughing and looked very gravely at his daughter lying in his arms. And now she slowly opened her eyes and asked wonderingly where she was and what had happened.

“You are out for a walk with your Father and you have just seen a toad,” said the King. “What is a toad?” asked Lily.

And then King Courtesy (and you will remember that although he was not very clever he was very wise) thought for a moment and, when he had thought, he looked bang into Princess

Lily’s eyes and said:

“Are you a brave little Princess?”

“Yes,” said Lily, “I think so.”

The King put her on her feet and, taking her hand in his, said:

“Now you are quite safe, and you know there is nothing to be frightened of when you are with me, don’t you?”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” said little Lily. “You are quite sure?”

“Yes, Father.”

“Very well. That is a toad!” said the King, pointing to it and watching his daughter to see what would happen. Well, her eyes began to open wider and wider and her mouth to grow rounder and rounder and she was just going to scream again; but the King pressed her hand tight, to remind her that he was there, and this time she did not faint, though she felt little trembles running up and down all over her like mice. She just stood shivering and shaking like a leaf hanging on the branch of a tree, when the wind blows it about, and she would not look at the great grey-green toad lolloping along in the ditch.

“Oh, Father, take me home, take me home!” she whimpered. So the King turned with her and walked towards home.

How queer, thought the King, as they walked home, that a thing which makes one person laugh should make another scream and shiver. He could not understand it. He did not remember the little two-day-old baby who only lay in a Queen’s bed and watched with wide-open eyes the antics of that strange mechanical toad. Nor did Princess Lily herself remember it, for she had been so young then that her memory hadn’t started. But somewhere inside her, somewhere behind those wide, wide eyes, the jumping toad with its electric glare and her Mother’s loud scream in the dark had printed their mark, just as a picture is printed inside a picture-machine, though if you opened the machine you would see nothing.

This was the first time since then that she had seen a toad. Oh, if only she had listened to nobody but her Father! For now His Majesty began to explain, as they walked along, that there was nothing to be frightened of in a toad or indeed in any other of God’s creatures—except lions and tigers.

“Only weak and silly people scream when they see mice and spiders and toads,” he said: “all sensible people know that they are really just as beautiful as bees and butterflies and robins. But you must get to know them and you mustn’t be frightened.”

Then Princess Lily began to feel a little ashamed of herself. All the way home the King talked to her in this way and promised to help her to be brave and untrembly, telling her stories of the way in which other people had conquered their fears.

When they reached the Castle, Lily ran upstairs to the Royal Nursery for tea. She said nothing to her old Nurse about the toad, because she felt she would rather not speak of it to anyone. She only wanted to forget all about it very quickly.

King Courtesy opened the door of the Tea Hall and went in. He found Aunt Gamboy sitting behind a table waiting for him. She had put away her spectacles (indeed she hardly ever wore them now except in her own room) and she had left her black book upstairs (she hardly ever read it now except in her own room); and there she sat behind the table. How like the Queen she was! The King was beginning to notice this more and more, and sometimes, when they sat alone together in one of the rooms in the Castle, a great peace would come to him and he would almost believe that Violet was with him again. If he looked very hard at Aunt Gamboy at these times, he fancied her face changing under his very eyes; not the features themselves, but the look on them seemed to slide and change, to change like the shape of a cloud, until he fell in a dream that his beloved Queen herself was looking out at him through Gamboy’s eyes. Then the world and the Castle and the walls of the room would all seem very shadowy and far-away, and he would dream on, wondering what might be the difference between life and death.

He sat down at the table:

“Such a curious thing happened this afternoon, when we were out for a walk,” he said. “What was it, my dear?” said Gamboy.

Yes, Aunt Gamboy called the King “My dear”! So he told her all that had happened, and of course she was very surprised, and told the King that she couldn’t understand it at all. She quite agreed, she said, that little Lily must be taught to conquer her silly fear. It was not the thing, she said, for a Princess to be afraid. She had never been afraid of toads, she said, or anything else, and she would do her best to cure her niece. That was the end of their talk on that matter.

But Aunt Gamboy knew more about toads than anybody else in the country. She had read about them in that black book of hers. There was a good deal of magic in that book. And, of course, as it was a black book, it was Black Magic. It was because she knew so much about toads that she had sent the Little Fat Podger into her sister’s room on the night he finished his machine and got inside it. She had known well enough what would happen. That was why she had done it. and since that night she had been reading, reading, reading. She had taken lately, as you know, to leaving her book upstairs, but she had not stopped reading it. When she was not smiling sweetly at the weary King or calling him “My dear”, you would have found her, if you had looked, upstairs in her room, horn-rimmed spectacles on nose, poring over her book and reading about— toads.

“Oh dear! Here’s that horrid Aunt Gamboy,” thought Lily to herself as she heard Aunt Gamboy’s footsteps coming upstairs to the Royal Nursery.