ister was long past any proper pride in his grammar.

And then, cutting its way through the thick, sticky waves of the treacle
sea, came the hot dragon, melting a way for himself as he came. And he
got nearer and nearer and bigger and bigger, and at last he came close
to the beach, snouting and snorting, and opened two great mouths in an
expecting, hungry sort of way; and when he found he was not being fed
the expression of the mouths changed to an angry and surprised question.
And one mouth was a pig's mouth and one was a lizard's.

Billy the King borrowed a pin from Eliza the Queen to stick into the
Prime Minister, who was by this time nearly buried in the seaweed which
he had been trying to arrange in his hair.

'Speak up, silly!' said His Majesty.

The Prime Minister spoke up.

'Please, sir,' he said to the two-headed dragon, 'our King has
abdicated, so we've nothing for you just now, but if you could just run
over to Allexanassa and pick up their Queen, we'll have a nice fat King
ready for you if you'll call on your way home.'

The Prime Minister shuddered as he spoke. He happened to be very fat.

The dragon did not say a word. He nodded with both his heads and grunted
with both his mouths, and turned his one tail and swam away along the
track of thin, warm treacle which he had made in swimming across the
sea.

Quick as thought, Billy the King signed to the Prime Minister and to
Eliza, and they launched the boat. Billy sprang on board and pushed off,
and it was not till the boat was a dozen yards from shore that he turned
to wave a farewell to Eliza and the Prime Minister. The latter was
indeed still on the beach, searching hopefully among the drifts and
weeds for more straws, to mark his sense of the constitutional crisis,
but Eliza had disappeared.

'Oh dear, oh dear,' said Billy the King; 'surely that brute of a Prime
Minister can't have killed her right off, so as to have her ready for
the dragon when he comes back. Oh, my dear little Eliza!'

'I'm here,' said a thick voice.

And, sure enough, there was Eliza, holding on to the gunwale of the
boat and swimming heavily in the warm treacle. Nearly choked with it,
too, for she had been under more than once.

Billy hastened to haul her aboard, and, though she was quite brown and
very, very sticky, the moment she was safe in the boat he threw his arms
round her and said:

'Dear, darling Eliza, you're the dearest, bravest girl in the world. If
we ever