Page:Oswald Bastable and Others - Nesbit.djvu/324

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280
THE PRINCESS AND THE CAT

shouted 'Liberty and Soap!' and they sent the boy to the workhouse, and they put the Princess in prison; and a good many of them wanted to cut off her pretty little head then and there, because they thought she would be sure to grow up horrid like her uncle the Regent.

But all the people who had ever been inside the palace said what a nice little girl the Princess really was, and wouldn't hear of cutting off her darling head. So at last it was decided to get rid of her by enchantment, and the Head Magician to the Provisional Revolutionary Government was sent for.

'Certainly, citizens,' he said, 'I'll put her in a tower on the Forlorn Island, in the middle of the Perilous Sea—a nice strong tower, with only one way out.'

'That's one too many. There's not to be any way out,' said the people.

'Well, there's a way out of everything, you know,' said the Magician timidly—he was trembling for his own head—'but it's fifty thousand millions to one against her ever finding it.'

So they had to be content with that, and they fetched Everilda out of her prison; and the Magician took her hand and called his carriage,