ut. Only they did not like to disobey their
mother.

But one morning their mother was busy preparing some new dragon poison
to lay down in the cellars, and their father was bandaging the hand of
the boot boy, which had been scratched by one of the dragons who liked
to eat Prime Ministers when they were to be had, so nobody remembered to
say to the children: "Don't get up till it is quite dark!"

"Go now," said Harry. "It would not be disobedient to go. And I know
exactly what we ought to do, but I don't know how we ought to do it."

"What ought we to do?" said Effie.

"We ought to wake St. George, of course," said Harry. "He was the only
person in his town who knew how to manage dragons; the people in the
fairy tales don't count. But St. George is a real person, and he is only
asleep, and he is waiting to be waked up. Only nobody believes in St.
George now. I heard father say so."

"We do," said Effie.

"Of course we do. And don't you see, Ef, that's the very reason why we
could wake him? You can't wake people if you don't believe in them, can
you?"

Effie said no, but where could they find St. George?

"We must go and look," said Harry boldly. "You shall wear a dragonproof
frock, made of stuff like the curtains. And I will smear myself all over
with the best dragon poison, and--"

Effie clasped her hands and skipped with joy and cried: "Oh, Harry! I
know where we can find St. George! In St. George's Church, of course."

"Um," said Harry, wishing he had thought of it for himself, "you have a
little sense sometimes, for a girl."

So the next afternoon, quite early, long before the beams of sunset
announced the coming night, when everybody would be up and working, the
two children got out of bed. Effie wrapped herself in a shawl of
dragonproof muslin--there was no time to make the frock--and Harry made
a horrid mess of himself with the patent dragon poison. It was warranted
harmless to infants and invalids, so he felt quite safe.

Then they joined hands and set out to walk to St. George's Church. As
you know, there are many St. George's churches, but fortunately they
took the turning that leads to the right one, and went along in the
bright sunlight, feeling very brave and adventurous.

There was no one about in the streets except dragons, and the place was
simply swarming with them. Fortunately none of the dragons were just the
right size for eating little boys and girls, or perhaps this story might
have