rench cook could have either cooked
or described it. He was a little hungry--he had had nothing to eat since
the bread and cheese at supper in Claremont Square the night before
last.

After breakfast he rode out on a white pony, a thing he might have lived
in Claremont Square for ever without doing. And he found he rode very
well. After the ride he went on the sea in a boat, and was surprised and
delighted to find that he knew how to sail as well as how to steer. In
the afternoon he was taken to a circus; and in the evening the whole
Court played blind-man's buff. A most enchanting day!

Next morning the breakfast was boiled underdone eggs and burnt herrings.
The King was too polite to make remarks about his food, but he did feel
a little disappointed.

The Prime Minister was late for breakfast and came in looking hot and
flurried, and a garland of straw was entwined in the Prime Ministerial
hair.

'Excuse my hair, sire,' he said. 'The cook left last night, but a new
one comes at noon to-day. Meantime, I have done my best.'

[Illustration: '"Excuse my hair, Sire," he said.'--Page 256.]

Billy said it was all right, and he had had an excellent breakfast. The
second day passed as happily as the first; the cook seemed to have
arrived, for the breakfast was made up for by the lunch. And Billy had
the pleasure of shooting at a target at two thousand yards with the
Lee-Metford rifle which had arrived by the same post as himself, and
hitting the bull's-eye every time.

This is really a rare thing--even when you are a King. But Billy began
to think it curious that he should never have found out before how
clever he was, and when he took down a volume of Virgil and found that
he could read it as easily as though it had been the 'Child's First
Reading-Book,' he was really astonished. So Billy said to the Prime
Minister:

'How is it I know so many things without learning them?'

'It's the rule here, sire,' said the Prime Minister. 'Kings are allowed
to know everything without learning it.'

Now, the next morning Billy woke very early, and got up and went out
into the garden, and, turning a corner suddenly, he came upon a little
person in a large white cap, with a large white apron on, in which she
was gathering sweet pot-herbs, thyme, and basil, and mint, and savory,
and sage, and marjoram. She stood up and dropped a curtsy.

'Halloa!' said Billy the King; 'who are you?'

'I'm the new cook,' said the person in the a