“_My Dear_” was really the Queen of Ragbad and years ago, when she had first come to the old red castle on the hill, she had worn her crown every day and was always addressed as “Your Majesty!” But as time passed and affairs in the kingdom had gone from bad to worse, _My Dear_, like many another Queen, had taken off her crown, put on her thimble and become plain Mrs Sew-and-Sew, and with all her sewing she had barely been able to keep the kingdom from falling to pieces. She was stitching a patch on the King’s Thursday cloak at this very minute I am telling you about. “What now!” gasped the poor lady, and rushing to the window she also pressed her nose to the pane. “Do you see what I see?” choked King Fumbo, clutching at her hand. “I see a great cloud rolling over Red Mountain,” panted Mrs Sew-and-Sew. “I see the red geese flying before the wind. I see—” Here she gave a great bounce and brushed past her husband—“I see my best patch work quilt blowing down the highway!” moaned Mrs Sew-and-Sew, stumbling across the room. “Ruination!” spluttered the King as the door slammed after his wife. “Shut the bells! Ring the windows; fetch Prince Tatters and call my red umbrella! Grampa! Scroggles! Where is every Ragbad-body?” Grampa, as it happened, was in the garden and Grampa was an old soldier with a game leg who had fought in nine hundred and eighty Ragbad battles and beaten everything, including the drum. Just now he was beating the carpet. Tatters, the young Prince of Ragbad, was off on a picnic with the Redsmith, and Scroggles, the footman-of-all-work about the castle, was mending a hole in the roof, so none of them heard the King’s calls. Finally, seeing that no one was coming to carry out his commands, Fumbo began to carry them out himself. First he clutched his red beard and jumped clear out of his carpet slippers. Next he slammed the window on his thumb. With his thumb in his mouth he hurled himself upon the bell rope, pulling it so violently the cord broke and dropped him upon his back. Having failed to ring the bell, he wrung his hands—and well he might, for the room had grown dark as pitch and the wind was howling down the chimney like a pack of hungry gollywockers.