But what had been happening inside the Castle all the time Gamboy was making her speech and the citizens were preparing to march? For many days past the Little Fat Podger had been striving hard to lighten the King’s load of sorrow by jesting and dancing before him in the most ludicrous manner he could devise. Since Courtesy was now King, it was the Dwarf’s duty, as Curator of the Royal Dump, to try to make him laugh, for his official task was to cure the King’s megrims. And as he loved his new master even more than his old one, and could not bear to see him unhappy, he tried all the harder to do his duty well; but it was very uphill work.

Now the Dwarf had a little workshop, right at the top of a high round turret, and there he made all his own clothes and furniture; for no tailor would make a suit of clothes small enough for the Little Fat Podger, and no carpenter could make a tiny enough wash-stand. So he made them all himself. But he was so neat and tricksy with his fingers that he could make all sorts of things besides ordinary clothes and furniture. In addition to the little red suits of clothes which he wore every day, he used to make wonderful costumes and machines to dance in. He had cloth- covered wooden frameworks, some of which were like birds, some like fish, and some like the different animals, but one in particular, all covered over with green, with a wonderful attachment of wooden laths and steel springs, which were covered to look like a grasshopper’s legs, he would perform the most ridiculous jigs that you ever saw. In happier days King Courtesy had been known to fall down weeping with laughter at the mere sight of it, but of late he had watched the Dwarf executing his wildest fandangos and had not even smiled. He was very unhappy indeed.

The poor Dwarf did not know what to do, and when he saw that the King took no notice of him he began to pine and mope. Everybody always laughed at him, but the only people he really liked to laugh were Courtesy and Violet and Violet’s Father and Mother, who were getting too old now to laugh very much. He would eat no food and spent most of the day sitting in his little workshop, staring idly at his tools, with the tears trickling down his coat. Alas, this went on for a whole month, and the Little Fat Podger grew so thin that he ought to have been called the Little Thin Podger. But one evening he was looking vacantly out of the window when he saw the King pacing up and down the garden underneath. Suddenly he stopped in his walk and burst out laughing. The Little Fat Podger could not believe his eyes: he craned out of the window to see what it could be that had made his gloomy master smile, and what was his surprise to see that it was nothing more than a clumsy great green toad, which had lollopped into the middle of the garden path and sat there looking at the King without taking the slightest trouble to get out of his way. The Dwarf stood at the window looking out at the King, and the King stood in the garden looking at the toad. The King laughed. The Dwarf gaped. There they stood stock-still, till the toad gathered itself together and flumped heavily to the side of the path.

Lollopy-lump, lollopy-lump, lollopy-lump! went the toad.

The King went on his way.

Up jumped the Dwarf and flew to his bench. Off came his coat, and in two minutes he was working furiously, surrounded by the greatest pudder that was ever seen—tools of every shape and size, gold paint, green paint, black paint, varnish, laths, steel springs, elastic bands, glass eyes, electric bulbs, cranks, pulleys, and the insides of seven clockwork engines.

“Never say die till you’re dead!” he whistled, as he planed away at one of the best and smoothest of his stock of laths, and the plane was so sharp and the wood so soft and firm that it was like paring a slab of cheese. He worked on without stopping for two days and nights, and all that time he ate nothing but bananas. Every half-hour he would pause for a minute to eat a banana, so that by the end of the second day he had eaten ninety-six bananas. But he wasn’t ill. And on the evening of the second day there in the corner of his workshop, striped with glossy black and green and gold, and shining-new with varnish, stood a beautiful mechanical toad, ten times larger than life. All four legs could be worked from the inside by springs, and the eyes were two bulging bulbs, which could be lit up by means of a little electric switch inside the body. It was lovely. The Little Fat Podger ate four more bananas and drank a glass of port; then in he jumped and began to lollop down the winding stair to look for the King and make him laugh.

Lollopy-lump, lollopy-lump, lollopy-lump.

On the way he passed a scullery-maid, and she screamed and ran away for fright, but the Little Fat Podger didn’t hear this because in his hurry he had forgotten to make ear-holes in his machine.

Now this was the very afternoon of the day on which Princess Gamboy went down into the City, all of which you have already heard about. What you haven’t heard is that, just as she was starting out, she had met the Dwarf inside his toad. But she wasn’t frightened—not she. And it was then that she suddenly thought of her plan. It was a very cruel plan.

She called to the Dwarf; but he didn’t hear, because he had forgotten to make ear-holes. So she called again. But still he didn’t hear,—he just went lolloping on, as though nobody was there. Then she ran after him and thumped on the toad’s wooden back, calling out:

“Little Fat Podger! Little Fat Podger!”

This time he could just hear, but he was so muffled up in his machine that he could not tell whose voice it was.

“Yes?” he shouted.

“Will you take this note to Queen Violet for me?” cried Gamboy. “Very well,” called the obliging little fellow. “Put it under me!”

So Princess Gamboy took a piece of paper from her purse, folded it up, and scribbled “V. R.” on it, which stood for Violetta Regina, which is Latin for Queen Violet, and she thrust it underneath the machine, and the Dwarf took it.

But there was nothing written inside the piece of paper.

The Little Fat Podger gave up looking for the King, however, and trundled off to Violet’s room with the note. The Queen was in bed with her tiny little daughter, alone in the dark. She was very pale and thin. When the Dwarf knocked at the door, she called out in a weak voice:

“Come in!”

Of course the Dwarf didn’t hear this, but he opened the door very gently and went in without waiting for an answer. He knew the Queen wouldn’t mind.

Shut up in his workshop for two whole days, he had not heard of the Physicians' orders that Violet was to be kept very quiet. Nor did he know anything about the tiny little daughter, so he opened the door very gently and went in.

Far away, down in the City, Princess Gamboy on her tub was pointing scornfully to the brilliantly-lit Castle, and all the citizens were thinking, “How happy everybody must be in the Castle! I expect there is dancing going on behind those bright windows. How different from all ourmisery!”

But now Queen Violet looked from her bed and saw a great green toad coming in at the door with bulging eyes that shone right across the dark room. And she was very ill, and she raised herself up in bed and uttered one loud scream of terror and fell back dead.

But the Dwarf didn’t hear her scream, because he had forgotten to make ear-holes.

And he thought to himself: “Now I am here, I will try and cheer the Queen up a little.” So he worked the springs and switched the lights on and off and flopped clumsily up and down the room, chuckling to himself to think how the Queen must be laughing, though he couldn’t hear it, and how much better she would be for it afterwards. And the little two-day-old baby in the bed looked on all the time with wide, wide eyes, not knowing at all what was happening, but much too young to feel frightened. But then the Dwarf happened to turn the toad’s electric eyes in the direction of the bed. They shone full on the Queen’s pale face. He saw what had happened.

Crash! He had jumped through the side of his machine, like a circus-rider piercing a paper hoop, and was kneeling by the bedside, chafing the Queen’s hands and imploring her to answer him. But she said nothing. And then the Little Fat Podger began to weep, because he had killed his mistress.

This was Princess Gamboy’s plan, you see.

Soon the Physicians came in to see how Queen Violet was. And when they saw what had happened, they sent for the King. But I will not try and tell you what King Courtesy felt when he came into that bedroom. Of course everybody thought it was the Dwarf’s fault, and the King at once ordered him to be arrested. But the poor little Dwarf didn’t care at all what they thought of him. He only wanted so badly to explain to Queen Violet that he hadn’t meant to frighten her.

“Mistress! Mistress!” he kept saying, while they put handcuffs on him and took him away, “Oh, mistress, you do understand, don’t you?”

But of course Violet didn’t understand, because she couldn’t hear.

And now a noise was heard outside the castle wall. It was the mob of citizens who had at last arrived at the top of the hill:

“No more flour in the sack”

they sang. And they beat upon the Castle gate with their pitchforks and axes, crying, “Let us in, let us in!”

The King did not know what it was; but when he had listened to them out of the window for a little, he understood, and himself went quietly downstairs and alone across the courtyard to open the gates. As soon as the gate began to creak ajar, the foremost among them made a rush to get in, but when they saw the King, they were abashed and fell back. Yet the people behind still pressed them forward.

“Where is Queen Violet?” they cried. “We have come to save her.”

And then the King began to speak to them, and he spoke in the same funny polite voice in which he had spoken to Violet when he first met her in the West Corner of the Queen’s Garden.

“Sirs,” he said, “I fear your zeal outruns your discretion. Nevertheless it is now my painful duty to inform you that your kindness arrives too late. The lady is dead, you see— Dead—no doubt you have heard the word before. And now, sirs, I perceive animosity in your looks. If anyone would care fillip me up a little with an axe or a pitchfork—what can I say? I am his King and therefore entirely at his service.” And King Courtesy bared and bowed his neck, waiting for someone of his subjects to come at him and strike off his head.

But not one of the crowd made a move. The anger suddenly died out of them when they thought of their beloved Queen lying white and cold in her bed in the Castle. Gradually they fell back, and one by one slunk away down the hill towards their homes.

“Goodnight, sirs,” called out the King through his nose. “Oh, goodnight, I’m sure!” and he closed the Castle gate.

But when he had shut the gate and was alone, his queer manner suddenly changed. His head hung down, his shoulders began to droop, his knees bent beneath him, and he looked like an old, old man.