account-book, and feeling in his pockets for a stump of pencil that he
knew was in one of them.

'By all means. I'll call my scribe.'

'Oh, I can scribe right enough, thanks,' said Cyril, finding the pencil
and licking its point. He even had to bite the wood a little, for it was
very blunt.

'Oh, you clever, clever boy!' said the Queen. 'DO let me watch you do
it!'

Cyril wrote on a leaf of the book--it was of rough, woolly paper, with
hairs that stuck out and would have got in his pen if he had been using
one, and ruled for accounts.

'Hide IT most carefully before you come here,' he wrote, 'and don't
mention it--and destroy this letter. Everything is going A1. The Queen
is a fair treat. There's nothing to be afraid of.'

'What curious characters, and what a strange flat surface!' said the
Queen. 'What have you inscribed?'

'I've 'scribed,' replied Cyril cautiously, 'that you are fair, and
a--and like a--like a festival; and that she need not be afraid, and
that she is to come at once.'

Ritti-Marduk, who had come in and had stood waiting while Cyril wrote,
his Babylonish eyes nearly starting out of his Babylonish head, now took
the letter, with some reluctance.

'O Queen, live for ever! Is it a charm?' he timidly asked. 'A strong
charm, most great lady?'

'YES,' said Robert, unexpectedly, 'it IS a charm, but it won't hurt
anyone until you've given it to Jane. And then she'll destroy it,
so that it CAN'T hurt anyone. It's most awful strong!--as strong
as--Peppermint!' he ended abruptly.

'I know not the god,' said Ritti-Marduk, bending timorously.

'She'll tear it up directly she gets it,' said Robert, 'That'll end the
charm. You needn't be afraid if you go now.'

Ritti-Marduk went, seeming only partly satisfied; and then the Queen
began to admire the penny account-book and the bit of pencil in so
marked and significant a way that Cyril felt he could not do less than
press them upon her as a gift. She ruffled the leaves delightedly.

'What a wonderful substance!' she said. 'And with this style you make
charms? Make a charm for me! Do you know,' her voice sank to a whisper,
'the names of the great ones of your own far country?'

'Rather!' said Cyril, and hastily wrote the names of Alfred the Great,
Shakespeare, Nelson, Gordon, Lord Beaconsfield, Mr Rudyard Kipling, and
Mr Sherlock Holmes, while the Queen watched him with 'unbaited breath',
as Anthea said afterwards.

She took the book and hid it r