[Illustration: "By-and-by he began to wander." _See page 29._]

At first the people of Rotundia were quite pleased with the dragon, who
lived by the pillar and fed himself from the bun trees, but by-and-by he
began to wander. He would creep into the burrows made by the great
rabbits; and excursionists, sporting on the downs, would see his long,
tight, whiplike tail wriggling down a burrow and out of sight, and
before they had time to say, "There he goes," his ugly purple head
would come poking out from another rabbit-hole--perhaps just behind
them--or laugh softly to itself just in their ears. And the dragon's
laugh was not a merry one. This sort of hide-and-seek amused people at
first, but by-and-by it began to get on their nerves: and if you don't
know what that means, ask Mother to tell you next time you are playing
blind man's buff when she has a headache. Then the dragon got into the
habit of cracking his tail, as people crack whips, and this also got on
people's nerves. Then, too, little things began to be missed. And you
know how unpleasant that is, even in a private school, and in a public
kingdom it is, of course, much worse. The things that were missed were
nothing much at first--a few little elephants, a hippopotamus or two,
and some giraffes, and things like that. It was nothing much, as I say,
but it made people feel uncomfortable. Then one day a favorite rabbit of
the Princess's, called Frederick, mysteriously disappeared, and then
came a terrible morning when the Mexican lapdog was missing. He had
barked ever since the dragon came to the island, and people had grown
quite used to the noise. So when his barking suddenly ceased it woke
everybody up--and they all went out to see what was the matter. And the
lapdog was gone!

A boy was sent to wake the army, so that it might look for him. But the
army was gone too! And now the people began to be frightened. Then Uncle
James came out onto the terrace of the palace, and he made the people a
speech. He said: "Friends--fellow citizens--I cannot disguise from
myself or from you that this purple dragon is a poor penniless exile, a
helpless alien in our midst, and, besides, he is a--is no end of a
dragon."

The people thought of the dragon's tail and said, "Hear, hear."

Uncle James went on: "Something has happened to a gentle and defenseless
member of our community. We don't know what has happened."

Everyone thought of the rabbit named Frederick, and groaned.