Wet Magic
is what you have to do and don't like doing? And play's whatever you want to do. Have some more Andrew Aromaticus."
She made a sign to a Salmoner, who approached with a great salver of fruit. The company were seated by fours and fives and sixes at little tables, such as you see in the dining rooms of the big hotels where people feed who have motors. These little tables are good for conversation.
"Then what do you do?" Kathleen asked.
"Well, we have to keep all the rivers flowing, for one thing—the earthly rivers, I mean—and to see to the rain and snow taps, and to attend to the tides and whirlpools, and open the cages where the winds are kept. Oh, it's no easy business being a Princess in our country, I can tell you, whatever it may be in yours. What do your Princesses do? Do they open the wind cages?"
"I . . . I don't know," said the children. "I think they only open bazaars."
"Mother says they work awfully hard, and they go and see people who are ill in hospitals," Kathleen was beginning, but at this moment the Queen rose and so did everyone else.
"Come," said the Princess, "I must go and take my turn at river-filling. Only Princesses can do the finest sort of work."
"What is the hardest thing you have to do?" Francis asked as they walked out into the garden.
"Keeping the sea out of our kingdom," was the answer, "and fighting the Under Folk. We kept the sea out by trying very hard with both hands, inside our minds. And, of course, the sky helps."
"And how do you fight the Under Folk—and who are they?" Bernard wanted to know.
"Why, the thick-headed, heavy people who live in the deep sea."
"Different from you?" Kathleen asked.
"My dear child!"
"She means," explained Mavis, "that we didn't know there
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