had not added any special order.
So the Hippogriff was entirely its own master as far as the choice
of where it was to go was concerned. It tossed its white mane after
circling three times between air and sky, made straight for the
Island-where-you-mayn't-go. The Pretenderette didn't know that it was
the Island-where-you-mayn't-go, and as they got nearer and she could
see plainly its rainbow-coloured sands, its palms and its waterfalls,
its cool green thickets and many tinted flowers and glowing fruits, it
seemed to her that she might do worse than land there and rest for a
little while. For even the most disagreeable people get tired
sometimes, and the Pretenderette had had a hard day of it. So she made
no attempt to check the Hippogriff or alter its course. And when the
Hippogriff was hovering but a few inches from the grass of the most
beautiful of the island glades, she jerked Philip roughly off her knee
and he fell all in a heap on the ground. With great presence of mind
our hero--if he isn't a hero by now he never will be--picked himself
up and bolted into the bushes. No rabbit could have bolted more
instantly and fleetly.

'I'll teach you,' said the furious Pretenderette, preparing to alight.
She looked down to find a soft place to jump on. And then she saw that
every blade of grass was a tiny spear of steel, and every spear was
pointed at her. She made the Hippogriff take her to another glade--more
little steel spears. To the rainbow sands--but on looking at them she
saw that they were quivering quicksands. Wherever green grass had grown
the spears now grew; and wherever the sand was it was a terrible trap of
quicksand. She tried to dismount in a little pool, but fortunately for
her she noticed in time that what shone in it so silvery was not water
but white-hot molten metal.

'What a nasty place,' said the Pretenderette; 'I don't know that I could
have chosen a nastier place to leave that naughty child in. He'll know
who's master by the time I send to fetch him back to prison. Here, you,
get back to Polistopolis as fast as you can. See? Please, I mean,' she
added, and then she spoke the magic word.

Philip was peeping through the bushes close by, and he heard that magic
word (I dare not tell you what it is) and he saw for the first time the
face of the Pretenderette. And he trembled and shivered in his bushy
lurking-place. For the Pretenderette was the only really unpleasant
person Philip had ever met in the