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Rh and mantelpieces with gold paint, and stuck embossed coloured scraps on them.

Then he went out into the garden to get a good look at his magenta Palace from the outside, and as he went along the clipped-yew walk there was the Princess Perihelia weeping over the white stone.

“What are you crying for?” he asked.

“I’m crying for the White King,” said she.

“And why do you cry here?” said the Magician.

“I don’t know,” said the poor Princess, and she looked so beautiful that the Magician went straight into the Palace and told the Prime Tailor to sew new rubies all over his new purple plush suit because he was going a-courting.

The very next day Negretti put on the purple plush suit as well as the Royal Crown, and went to the wing of the Palace which the White King had set apart for the Princess Perihelia to live in. Alban’s crown was made of silver and pearls and moonstones, and the new King had ordered a new crown, all gold, and stuck as full of rubies and emeralds and sapphires as a really good Christmas cake is of plums. (I do not mean the cake they call “good, wholesome school cake,” but the kind