“Help!” shrieked the Scissor Bird, wakening with a bounce. “Help! Help! The Queen has gone to pieces!” At the Scissor Bird’s sharp outcries, the Prime Piecer and Chief Scrapper of Patch fairly rushed through the doorway. “I’ve been expecting this!” groaned the Prime Piecer, and taking a huge bite from the chunk of beeswax he held in one hand began to chew it gloomily. [Illustration] “Well, if you’ve been expecting it you’re not surprised,” sniffed the Chief Scrapper crossly, “but it’s too bad to have it happen at the busiest season of the year. Now we’ll have to stop everything and find a new ruler. Hold your bill, Nipper!” Stamping his foot at the Scissor Bird, the Chief Scrapper of Patch marched stiffly from the room. Neither the Prime Piecer nor the Chief Scrapper seemed to think it queer for the Queen to go to pieces. And no doubt this is because, sooner or later, all of the Quilties do this very thing. Living in a fairy country and being magically constructed they cannot die, so when they wear out, they simply go to pieces. When a Quilty goes to pieces, his relatives or friends sweep up the scraps and put them away in a tidy scrap-bag and in ten years or so he comes out of the bag as good as ever. This does seem a curious custom, but curious or not, that is exactly what happens, and while Scrapper went to fetch the Royal scrap-bag and Piecer the Royal dust-pan, the Scissor Bird flew out of the window to break the news to the patchworking populace. [Illustration] In a huge sewing circle, the Quilty Dames were stitching upon a quilt and in their separate garden patches, the Quilty men were busily picking cotton-patches. But as the Scissor Bird flew screaming overhead and they realized that Queen Cross Patch had gone to pieces at last, they all stopped working and looked fearfully at one another. Who would be the next ruler of Patch? Whenever a ruler went to pieces another was immediately chosen by the method laid down in the Imperial Scrap Book and always one of the Quilties had been chosen. [Illustration]