pron.

Her big flapping cap hid her face, but Billy knew her voice.

'Why,' said he, turning her face up with his hands under her chin,
'you're Eliza!'

And sure enough it was Eliza, but her round face looked very much
cleverer and prettier than it had done when he saw it last.

'Hush!' she said. 'Yes, I am. I got the place as Queen of Allexanassa,
but it was all horribly grand, and such long trains, and the crown is
awfully heavy. And yesterday morning I woke very early, and I thought
I'd just put on my old frock--mother made it for me the very last thing
before she was taken ill.'

'Don't cry,' said Billy the King gently.

'And I went out, and there was a man with a boat, and he didn't know I
was the Queen, and I got him to take me for a row on the sea, and he
told me some things.'

'What sort of things?'

'Why, about us, Billy. I suppose you're the same as I am now, and know
everything without learning it. What's Allexanassa Greek for?'

'Why, something like the Country of Changing Queens, isn't it?'

'And what does Plurimiregia mean?'

'That must mean the land of many Kings. Why?'

'Because that's what it is. They're always changing their Kings and
Queens here, for a most horrid and frightening reason, Billy. They get
them from a registry office a long way off so that they shouldn't know.
Billy, there's a dreadful dragon, and he comes once a month to be fed.
And they feed him with Kings and Queens! That's why we know everything
without learning. Because there's no time to learn in. And the dragon
has two heads, Billy--a pig's head and a lizard's head--and the pig's
head is to eat _you_ with and the lizard's head will eat _me_!'

'So they brought us here for that,' said Billy--'mean, cruel, cowardly
brutes!'

'Mother always said you could never tell what a situation was like until
you tried it,' said Eliza. 'But what are we to do? The dragon comes
to-morrow. When I heard that I asked where your kingdom was, and the
boatman showed me, and I made him land me here. So Allexanassa hasn't
got a Queen now, but Plurimiregia has got us both.'

Billy rumpled his hair with his hands.

'Oh, my cats alive!' he said, 'we must do something; but I'll tell you
what it is, Eliza. You're no end of a brick to come and tell me. You
might have got off all by yourself, and left me to the pig's head.'

'No, I mightn't,' said Eliza sharply. 'I know everything that people can
learn, the same as you, and that includes rig