said the Princess, shuddering, “but I hope I know my geography.”
“All of it?” asked Matilda.
“Even the exports and imports,” said the Princess. “Goodbye, I’m so thin I have to rest a good deal or I should wear myself out. Nurse, take her away.”
So nurse took her away to a wonderful room, where she amused herself till tea-time with all the kind of toys that you see and want in the shop when some one is buying you a box of bricks or a puzzle map—the kind of toys you never get because they are so expensive.
Matilda had tea with the King. He was full of true politeness and treated Matilda exactly as though she had been grown up—so that she was extremely happy and behaved beautifully.
The King told her all his troubles.
“You see,” he began, “what a pretty place my Green Land was once. It has points even now. But things aren’t what they used to be. It’s that bird, that Cockatoucan. We daren’t kill it or give it away. And every time it laughs something changes. Look at my Prime Minister. He was a six-foot man. And look at him now. I could lift him with
