ked up and carried away by a very large one, and then
the other newspaper people had not anyone left to tell them what they
ought not to believe. So when the largest elephant in the Zoo was
carried off by a dragon, the papers gave up pretending--and put ALARMING
PLAGUE OF DRAGONS at the top of the paper.

[Illustration: "The largest elephant in the zoo was carried off." _See
page 43._]

You have no idea how alarming it was, and at the same time how
aggravating. The large-size dragons were terrible certainly, but when
once you had found out that the dragons always went to bed early because
they were afraid of the chill night air, you had only to stay indoors
all day, and you were pretty safe from the big ones. But the smaller
sizes were a perfect nuisance. The ones as big as earwigs got in the
soap, and they got in the butter. The ones as big as dogs got in the
bath, and the fire and smoke inside them made them steam like anything
when the cold water tap was turned on, so that careless people were
often scalded quite severely. The ones that were as large as pigeons
would get into workbaskets or corner drawers and bite you when you were
in a hurry to get a needle or a handkerchief. The ones as big as sheep
were easier to avoid, because you could see them coming; but when they
flew in at the windows and curled up under your eiderdown, and you did
not find them till you went to bed, it was always a shock. The ones this
size did not eat people, only lettuce, but they always scorched the
sheets and pillowcases dreadfully.

Of course, the County Council and the police did everything that could
be done: It was no use offering the hand of the Princess to anyone who
killed a dragon. This way was all very well in olden times--when there
was only one dragon and one Princess; but now there were far more
dragons than Princesses--although the Royal Family was a large one. And
besides, it would have been a mere waste of Princesses to offer rewards
for killing dragons, because everybody killed as many dragons as they
could quite out of their own heads and without rewards at all, just to
get the nasty things out of the way. The County Council undertook to
cremate all dragons delivered at their offices between the hours of ten
and two, and whole wagonloads and cartloads and truckloads of dead
dragons could be seen any day of the week standing in a long line in the
street where the County Council had their offices. Boys brought
barrowlo