She took the book and hid it reverently among the bright folds of her gown. “You shall teach me later to say the great names,” she said. “And the names of their Ministers—perhaps the great Nisroch is one of them?” “I don’t think so,” said Cyril. “Mr Campbell Bannerman’s Prime Minister and Mr Burns a Minister, and so is the Archbishop of Canterbury, I think, but I’m not sure—and Dr Parker was one, I know, and—” “No more,” said the Queen, putting her hands to her ears. “My head’s going round with all those great names. You shall teach them to me later—because of course you’ll make us a nice long visit now you have come, won’t you? Now tell me—but no, I am quite tired out with your being so clever. Besides, I’m sure you’d like _me_ to tell _you_ something, wouldn’t you?” “Yes,” said Anthea. “I want to know how it is that the King has gone—” “Excuse me, but you should say ‘the King may-he-live-for-ever’,” said the Queen gently. “I beg your pardon,” Anthea hastened to say—“the King may-he-live-for-ever has gone to fetch home his fourteenth wife? I don’t think even Bluebeard had as many as that. And, besides, he hasn’t killed _you_ at any rate.” The Queen looked bewildered. “She means,” explained Robert, “that English kings only have one wife—at least, Henry the Eighth had seven or eight, but not all at once.” “In our country,” said the Queen scornfully, “a king would not reign a day who had only one wife. No one would respect him, and quite right too.” “Then are all the other thirteen alive?” asked Anthea. “Of course they are—poor mean-spirited things! I don’t associate with them, of course, I am the Queen: they’re only the wives.” “I see,” said Anthea, gasping. “But oh, my dears,” the Queen went on, “such a to-do as there’s been about this last wife! You never did! It really was _too_ funny. We wanted an Egyptian princess. The King may-he-live-for-ever has got a wife from most of the important nations, and he had set his heart on an Egyptian one to complete his collection. Well, of course, to begin with, we sent a handsome present of gold. The Egyptian king sent back some horses—quite a few; he’s fearfully stingy!—and he said he liked the gold very much, but what they were really short of was lapis lazuli, so of course we sent him some. But by that time he’d begun to use the gold to cover the beams of the roof of the Temple of the Sun-God, and he hadn’t nearly enough to finish the job, so we sent some more. And so it went on, oh, for years. You see each journey takes at least six months. And at last we asked the hand of his daughter in marriage.” “Yes, and then?” said Anthea, who wanted to get to the princess part of the story.