The Skies Are Falling
remember afterward what it was that they ate out of the silver dishes and drank out of the golden cups. They none of them forgot the footmen, however, who were dressed in tight-fitting suits of silver scales, with silver fingerless gloves, and a sort of helmet on that made them look less like people than like fish, as Kathleen said.
"But they are fish," said the Princess, opening her beautiful eyes; "they're the Salmoners, and the one behind Mother's chair is the Grand Salmoner. In your country I have heard there are Grand Almoners. We have Grand Salmoners."
"Are all your servants fish?" Mavis asked.
"Of course," said the Princess, "but we don't use servants much except for state occasions. Most of our work is done by the lower orders—electric eels, most of them. We get all the power for our machinery from them."
"How do you do it?" Bernard asked, with a fleeting vision of being some day known as the great man who discovered the commercial value of the electricity obtainable from eels.
"We keep a tank of them," said she, "and you just turn a tap—they're connected up to people's houses—and you connect them with your looms or lathes or whatever you're working. That sets up a continuous current and the eels swim around and around in the current till the work's done. It's beautifully simple."
"It's simply beautiful," said Mavis warmly. "I mean all this." She waved her hand to the row of white arches through which the green of the garden and the blue of what looked like the sky showed plainly. "And you live down here and do nothing but play all day long? How lovely."
"You'd soon get tired of play if you did nothing else," said Bernard wisely. "At least I know I should. Did you ever make a steam engine?" he asked the Princess. "That's what I call work."
"It would be, to me," she said, "but don't you know that work
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