There was no bacon at little Princess Lily’s christening. Princess Lily was the name of Violet’s tiny little daughter, who was now growing larger and larger every day. But the christening was a very quiet affair, with no breakfast and no guests, because the King would have it so. After he had sent the citizens back to their homes on the night the Queen died, the King had walked straight to his private study and locked himself in. He had refused to see anybody or to take any interest in affairs of State. He would not even see his little daughter or give orders as to what was to be done with her. He was too full of hopeless grief to be able to think of anything but Violet, Violet, Violet. All day long and all night the thought of her filled his mind. Where was she? He could not believe that she would not soon knock gently on the door and come in.

Only once did he send for anybody to come to his chamber. And that was on the second day after he had entered it, when he sounded a bell and sent a page for the Lord High Teller of the Other from Which, who had recently been appointed Lord Chancellor. The new Lord Chancellor appeared, and the King asked him:

“When does the trial of my Dwarf fall due?” He would not use the name “Little Fat Podger,” because that was a funny little name.

“Sire,” said the Lord Chancellor, “it falls due tomorrow, but it will not take place.” “How!” exclaimed the King, “are my orders disobeyed, then?”

“Sire,” said the Lord Chancellor, “I regret to say that the Dwarf passed away this morning in gaol.” And he told the King how the shock had been too much for the Little Fat Podger. Weak as he was already, from having eaten nothing for a whole month except a hundred bananas, he quickly grew weaker still, and never recovered himself enough even to understand that he was in gaol awaiting trial for Murder and High Treason. He had talked continually, said his gaoler, of the dreadful mistake he had made, and was troubled because Violet had not answered when he tried to explain to her. Yet he seemed, as the time went by, to grow calmer and calmer, until this morning (and the Lord Chancellor mournfully repeated the words he had used before) he had “passed quietly away”.

But the King, when he heard this, only frowned and commanded that the Dwarf should be buried outside the common burying-ground, alone and with no inscription on his tomb, and that no man should speak his name under penalty of death. For he knew nothing of Princess Gamboy’s plan, and believed, as was to be expected, that the Dwarf had deliberately killed his mistress. So nobody knew what had happened, except Princess Gamboy, and though keeping quiet was not one of her habits, she kept very quiet about this.

For six months little Princess Lily lived with her Grandfather and Grandmother. They were stricken with grief for their favourite daughter and glad to have a little baby to look after. But after six months King Courtesy began to recover himself like a man and strove to take an interest in the government of his country. He no longer lived locked in his study, but went about the Castle in the old way, though at first everything he came to reminded him of the Queen, and gave him a great stab of pain in the heart, and made him want to sit down. He never went near the West Corner of the Queen’s Garden.

But he soon became very fond of his little daughter, the Princess Lily. She, too, reminded him of Violet, but somehow that did not seem to hurt in the same way. As she grew up, she grew more and more beautiful, and it was soon plain that when she became a lady she would be even more beautiful than Violet herself had been. You see, she had no twin, no Gamboy, with whose looks her own were magically linked. And as her heart was like Violet’s and not like Gamboy’s, her face blossomed into what Violet’s face would have been but for Gamboy’s wrinkles and old Miss Thomson’s queer spell. Very soon—even before she was a year old—she and her father became the closest companions. Wherever he went, he would take her with him, perched on his shoulder or in a little sling at his side, and all the time he would talk and talk to her—long before she could understand what he was saying. As soon as she grew more sturdy on her pins, the King was very anxious that she should learn to dance. For now that the Little Fat Podger and the Queen were both gone, there was nobody at all to dance to him. And then a very strange thing happened.

It was discovered that she could dance most beautifully without being taught a step! “Quite beautifully, my dear!” said all the Amalgamated Princesses who came to the

Castle to see Princess Gamboy, and who didn’t really care for dancing in the least but were much too silly to say so and have done with it. So for a long time Princess Lily and the King were very happy together, at least she was very happy and he was not so sad. Every evening they would sit together in his study, little Lily and her Father, and he would take her on his knee and read to her all the wise and lovely things written by the men who lived a long time ago, and, when they were tired of this, Princess Lily would get up and go into the light of the lamp and dance a solemn little dance of her own making, and the King would clap his hands with delight and look quite young again. She had a way of making little dresses for herself to dance in, you know, and one evening she suddenly appeared to the King in a papery frock all of russet-brown and danced wildly and oh so lightly up and down the great room with her hair streaming out behind, as though there were a strong wind blowing. “That was my Leaf Dance,” she cried out, as she ran back to her Father’s knee. But she found there were tears in his eyes and great lines of sorrow down his face, for he remembered how his Queen, too, had used to dance like a leaf in the wind. So she never wore that dress or danced that dance again, the dance in which she pretended to be a brown autumn leaf, blown along by the jolly wind. But she made other dresses and danced other dances, a Spring Dance, all in green, a Summer Dance, and a Winter Dance, in white like a snow-flake. And sometimes, while the King was reading to Lily beside the shaded lamp, or Lily was dancing to the King beneath the hanging one, Princess Gamboy, pretending some errand or other, would open the door and come into the room. She would stand just inside the door looking at them, and then, if the King was reading, she would say:

“Stuff!”

or if little Lily was dancing, she would say:

“Tsch!”

after which she would turn on her heel and go out, slamming the door. At such times Princess Lily would ask, “What is the matter with Aunt Gamboy?” And King Courtesy would reply meekly, “I don’t know, my dear,” and fall silent with a cloud over his eyes. For since the Queen’s death he had never had the heart to be angry with Gamboy. He knew how much Violet had loved her, and anything Violet had loved was precious to him. Therefore he always tried his hardest to please her, although the only thanks he received would be

“Stuff!”

or

“Tsch!”

All the same Aunt Gamboy (she was Aunt Gamboy now) had given up trying to stir rebellion among the King’s subjects. That was something. But whether this was out of gratitude to the King for his gentleness or because she had another little plan of her own, you must guess for yourself.

Luckily the harvests had been good since the dreadful winter when the citizens had marched up to the Castle on the cold night of Queen Violet’s death, so that they were happy and contented. Moreover they were sensible citizens and soon began to discover what a wise, unselfish ruler their King really was. And gradually they came to love him nearly as fondly as they had once loved the Queen.