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288 jonquils grew, and dumped it down there, and left it among the long grass.

And the Princess could not come and cry over it there because she did not know where it was, and besides she was very busy; for, after she had refused to marry him, the Magician said, “Very well, then, you can just do the free washing;” for the royal housekeeper had given five minutes’ notice, and left at the end of it, as soon as the new King had the Palace painted magenta, and no one else knew how to do washing by white magic, and though the people had sneered at it in the White King’s time they stood out for it now, and said free washing was what they had always been accustomed to. Poor Perihelia did not know the white magic; but she washed by the Sunlight Magic, and everything she sent home from the wash was pinky or pearly or greeny, like the little clouds in a May dawn. The people were pleased, but not the Magician.

“I like a colour to be a colour,” he said. “I hate your half measures.”

He was beginning to remodel the kingdom to his own fancy. Instead of a Lord Chief Good-doer he had a Lord Chief Magician, and instead of the Education Department he had