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16 The Vice was quickly rendered woady, and so were his tight, brief, nether garments, as the paint trickled. He was then stood in the sun and breeze of the verandah to dry.

"Try and dry a nice blue," adjured the President, "while I tie the lid of the soap-dish on to a stick for a stone-axe. You'll have to be jolly careful how you chop me with it when I'm the Censurian of the Tenth Legion."

"Might I cut a bit off you?"

"You might break the lid of the soap-dish, silly."

Having provided the Woady One with a stone-axe and a bone-headed spear which had once been a bone-handled umbrella, the President proceeded to set him up in life with even greater opulence. Visions of nothing less than a scythe-axled chariot were floating in her enterprising and inventive mind.

"You know those things in the picture, like milk-carts with grass-scythes on the wheels, don't you?" said she. "They were called chariots, and you stood up in them, and drove them about, cutting people's legs off as you went