e prince,
he cries in a ringing voice, 'This here is my true love, Cinderella,
what now I makes my lawful wedded wife.'"

Then she would come out of her dream, and look round at the grandees of
the Gardens with an extraordinary elation. "Her, as was only a kitchen
drudge," she would say in a strange soft voice and with shining eyes,
"but was true and faithful in word and deed, such was her reward."

I am sure that had the fairy godmother appeared just then and touched
Irene with her wand, David would have been interested rather than
astonished. As for myself, I believe I have surprised this little girl's
secret. She knows there are no fairy godmothers nowadays, but she hopes
that if she is always true and faithful she may some day turn into a
lady in word and deed, like the mistress whom she adores.

It is a dead secret, a Drury Lane child's romance; but what an amount of
heavy artillery will be brought to bear against it in this sad London of
ours. Not much chance for her, I suppose.

Good luck to you, Irene.

XIII. The Grand Tour of the Gardens

You must see for yourselves that it will be difficult to follow our
adventures unless you are familiar with the Kensington Gardens, as they
now became known to David. They are in London, where the King lives, and
you go to them every day unless you are looking decidedly flushed, but
no one has ever been in the whole of the Gardens, because it is so soon
time to turn back. The reason it is soon time to turn back is that you
sleep from twelve to one. If your mother was not so sure that you sleep
from twelve to one, you could most likely see the whole of them.

The Gardens are bounded on one side by a never-ending line of omnibuses,
over which Irene has such authority that if she holds up her finger
to any one of them it stops immediately. She then crosses with you in
safety to the other side. There are more gates to the Gardens than one
gate, but that is the one you go in at, and before you go in you speak
to the lady with the balloons, who sits just outside. This is as near to
being inside as she may venture, because, if she were to let go her hold
of the railings for one moment, the balloons would lift her up, and she
would be flown away. She sits very squat, for the balloons are always
tugging at her, and the strain has given her quite a red face. Once she
was a new one, because the old one had let go, and David was very sorry
for the old one, but as she did let