For King Alban had worked so hard for his people’s good that he had not had time to be amusing. He had never had processions and circuses, preferring rather small tea-parties with the Lord Chief Good-doer, the Commissioner of Public Health, and a few chosen spirits from the Education Department, and loving best of all to wander alone, dreaming, among the blossoming orchards or in the meadows beyond the river, where the white jonquils grew, or in the lanes between the pearly may-bushes, or in the terraced garden of his Palace, where the white roses hung in heavy-scented clusters, and the white peacocks spread their tails upon the marble balustrades. And wherever he went he thought of the people’s good, and devised new ways of making them comfortable. Everything was beautifully managed. Every one had enough to wear and enough to eat, and enough to do, which is very important; but they had not enough to play at, and this was what made them ready to lend long and discontented ears to the whispers of the King’s brother. [Illustration: “WELCOME! WELCOME!”] Now Negretti was a Magician, and his was the black or coloured magic which won’t wash clothes. He was always messing about with acids and alkalis, and sulphites and bicarbonates, and retorts and furnaces, and test-tubes, and pestles and mortars, and the like; and whenever he happened to make a nice colour by mixing two or more of these things together, he always put it in a bottle and stuck it up in one of the Palace windows, so that at night his windows were brighter than any chemist’s and druggist’s in any street, and the people said it was as good as fireworks. The King’s palace windows only sent out a soft white light like moonlight, and this was now considered very tame. It was the Magician’s habit to wander about the town stirring up discontent as easily as if it had been one of his chemical messes; and though he was so well known among the people he was never recognised, because he always took care to disguise himself as a respectable person, and the disguise was quite impenetrable. (I hope you know what that is?) One night he sat disguised at the King’s Head—the finest of the municipal alehouses—drinking dog’s-nose out of a pewter-pot, and the grumbling of the people was music in his wicked ears. “Alban is not my sort of king,” said the blacksmith. “I’d make a better king out of a penn’orth of putty any day of the week,” said the painter. “What’s the good of a king if you never see him?” said the landlady. “No processions, no flags, no gilt coaches, no rubies and diamonds and sapphires, no royal robes of purple and gold—such as a loyal country has a right to expect on its sovereign’s back! Only that old white thing,” said the barmaid. “No better than a velvet nightgown,” said the landlady.