The Skies Are Falling
were any other kind of people in the sea except your kind."
"You know much less about us than we do about you," said the Princess. "Of course there are different nations and tribes, and different customs and dresses and everything. But there are two great divisions down here besides us, the Thick-Heads and the Thin-Skins, and we have to fight both of them. The Thin-Skins live near the surface of the water, frivolous, silly things like nautiluses and flying fish, very pleasant, but deceitful and light-minded. They are very treacherous. The Thick-Heads live in the cold deep dark waters. They are desperate people."
"Do you ever go down there?"
The Princess shuddered.
"No," she said, "but we might have to. If the water ever came into our kingdom they would attack us, and we should have to drive them out; and then we should have to drive them right down to their own kingdom again. It happened once, in my grandfather's time."
"But how on earth," asked Bernard, "did you ever get the water out again?"
"It wasn't on earth, you know," said the Princess, "and the Whales blew a good deal of it out—the Grampuses did their best, but they don't blow hard enough. And the Octopuses finished the work by sucking the water out with their suckers."
"Do you have cats here then?" asked Kathleen, whose attention had wandered, and had only caught a word that sounded like Pussies.
"Only Octopussies," said the Princess, "but then they're eight times as pussy as your dry-land cats."
What Kathleen's attention had wandered to was a tall lady standing on a marble pedestal in the middle of a pool. She held a big vase over her head, and from it poured a thin stream of water. This stream fell in an arch right across the pool into a narrow
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