"But why send storks to fetch us at all?" demanded Mrs. Wibberley-Stimpson. "Why not some more modern conveyance?... There they are again with the car--coming back for us, I expect.... Yes, I can make out Baron Troitz and the trumpeters--and there seems to be a gentleman in armour with them." "The Regent, Marshal Federhelm," said the Fairy. "He is coming to offer his congratulations." "Is he?" cried Mrs. Wibberley-Stimpson, scrambling to her feet again in some dismay. "A Regent! I--I wish I knew the proper way of addressing him!" The storks by this time had brought the car to ground, and were now standing about on one leg with folded wings and an air of detachment. The Marshal alighted and advanced slowly towards the Stimpsons while the heralds sounded their trumpets. He made a formidable and warrior-like figure in his golden half-armour of a kind unknown to antiquarians, and great jack-boots of gilded leather. He was tall, and the towering mass of waving feathers that crowned his helmet made him look taller still. His vizor was raised, showing a swarthy, hook-nosed face, with quick, restless eyes like a lizard's, a fierce moustache, and a bristling beard that spread out in a stiff black fan. "_You_ had better speak to him, Sidney," whispered his wife, overcome by sudden panic; "I really can't." "Er--" began Mr. Stimpson nervously, "I believe I have the pleasure of addressing the Regent. We--we're the new King and Queen, you know, and these are the other members of the family." The Marshal seemed a little taken aback at first, but he promptly recovered himself, and bending so low that his feathers brushed Mrs. Wibberley-Stimpson's nose, he placed in her hand a small velvet-covered baton studded with gold stars. "Oh, thank you very much, I'm sure," she said. "It's quite charming. Has it got an address or anything inside it?" "The symbol of my authority, your Majesty," he said, with soldierly curtness. "I have long desired to surrender it to hands more worthy to govern than mine." "Very handsome of you to say so," replied Mr. Stimpson; "but I daresay you aren't altogether sorry to get out of it, eh?" "It is too lofty a position, Sire, for a rough, simple warrior like myself," he said. "Nothing but a sense of duty to my country would have made me accept the Regency at all." "I am sure," said Mrs. Wibberley-Stimpson, "we shall find you have carried on the Kingdom for us as satisfactorily as possible." "The people appeared to think so, your Majesty. But I am forgetting the chief purpose I am here for. I have the honour to announce that the procession will shortly be on its way to escort your Majesties to your Coronation, which is to take place this morning in the great church of Eswareinmal." "_Coronation!_" Mrs. Wibberley-Stimpson almost screamed. "Before we have so much as had our breakfast! And in these things we are wearing now! I never heard of anything so preposterous!"