'You'd like a wash, perhaps?' he said, 'and your Princess too. And
perhaps you'd like to dress up a little? Before the banquet, you know.'

'Banquet?' said Philip. 'I thought it was tea.'

'Business before pleasure,' said Mr. Noah; 'first the banquet, then the
tea. This way to the dressing-rooms.'

There were two doors side by side. On one door was painted 'Knight's
dressing-room,' on the other 'Princess's dressing-room.'

'Look out,' said Mr. Noah; 'the paint is wet. You see there wasn't much
time.'

Philip found his dressing-room very interesting. The walls were entirely
of looking-glass, and on tables in the middle of the room lay all sorts
of clothes of beautiful colours and odd shapes. Shoes, stockings, hats,
crowns, armour, swords, cloaks, breeches, waistcoats, jerkins, trunk
hose. An open door showed a marble bath-room. The bath was sunk in the
floor as the baths of luxurious Roman Empresses used to be, and as
nowadays baths sometimes are, in model dwellings. (Only I am told that
some people keep their coals in the baths--which is quite useless
because coals are always black however much you wash them.)

Philip undressed and went into the warm clear water, greenish between
the air and the marble. Why is it so pleasant to have a bath, and so
tiresome to wash your hands and face in a basin? He put on his shirt and
knickerbockers again, and wandered round the room looking at the clothes
laid out there, and wondering which of the wonderful costumes would be
really suitable for a knight to wear at a banquet. After considerable
hesitation he decided on a little soft shirt of chain-mail that made
just a double handful of tiny steel links as he held it. But a
difficulty arose.

'I don't know how to put it on,' said Philip; 'and I expect the banquet
is waiting. How cross it'll be.'

He stood undecided, holding the chain mail in his hands, when his eyes
fell on a bell handle. Above it was an ivory plate, and on it in black
letters the word Valet. Philip rang the bell.

Instantly a soft tap at the door heralded the entrance of a person whom
Philip at the first glance supposed to be a sandwich man. But the second
glance showed that the oblong flat things which he wore were not
sandwich-boards, but dominoes. The person between them bowed low.

'Oh!' said Philip, 'I rang for the valet.'

'I am not the valet,' said the domino-enclosed person, who seemed to be
in skintight black clothes under his dominoes, 'I am