,
Best Beloved. After that he never forgot that it was silly to show off;
and now the real story part of my story begins.

[Illustration: THIS is the picture of the Animal that came out of the
sea and ate up all the food that Suleiman-bin-Daoud had made ready for
all the animals in all the world. He was really quite a nice Animal, and
his Mummy was very fond of him and of his twenty-nine thousand nine
hundred and ninety-nine other brothers that lived at the bottom of the
sea. You know that he was the smallest of them all, and so his name was
Small Porgies. He ate up all those boxes and packets and bales and
things that had been got ready for all the animals, without ever once
taking off the lids or untying the strings, and it did not hurt him at
all. The sticky-up masts behind the boxes of food belong to
Suleiman-bin-Daoud's ships. They were busy bringing more food when Small
Porgies came ashore. He did not eat the ships. They stopped unloading
the foods and instantly sailed away to sea till Small Porgies had quite
finished eating. You can see some of the ships beginning to sail away by
Small Porgies' shoulder. I have not drawn Suleiman-bin-Daoud, but he is
just outside the picture, very much astonished. The bundle hanging from
the mast of the ship in the corner is really a package of wet dates for
parrots to eat. I don't know the names of the ships. That is all there
is in that picture.]

He married ever so many wifes. He married nine hundred and
ninety-nine wives, besides the Most Beautiful Balkis; and they all lived
in a great golden palace in the middle of a lovely garden with
fountains. He didn't really want nine-hundred and ninety-nine wives, but
in those days everybody married ever so many wives, and of course the
King had to marry ever so many more just to show that he was the King.

Some of the wives were nice, but some were simply horrid, and the horrid
ones quarrelled with the nice ones and made them horrid too, and then
they would all quarrel with Suleiman-bin-Daoud, and that was horrid for
him. But Balkis the Most Beautiful never quarrelled with
Suleiman-bin-Daoud. She loved him too much. She sat in her rooms in the
Golden Palace, or walked in the Palace garden, and was truly sorry for
him.

Of course if he had chosen to turn his ring on his finger and call up
the Djinns and the Afrits they would have magicked all those nine
hundred and ninety-nine quarrelsome wives into white mules of the desert
or gr