very much surprised, “why should I? I was spiteful when I was thin, but now I’m fat again I want every one to be happy.”
“But how can any one be happy?” asked Matilda, severely, “when every one is turned into something they weren’t meant to be? There’s your dear father—he’s a desirable villa—the Prime Minister was a little boy, and he got back again, and now he’s turned into a Comic Opera. Half the Palace housemaids are breakers, dashing themselves against the Palace crockery: the Navy, to a man, are changed to French poodles, and the Army to German sausages. Your favourite nurse is now a flourishing steam laundry, and I, alas! am too clever by half. Can’t that horrible bird do anything to put us all right again?”
“No,” said the Princess, dissolved in tears at this awful picture, “he told me once himself that when he laughed he could only change one or two things at once, and then, as often as not, it turned out to be something he didn’t expect. The only way to make everything come right again would be—but it can’t be done! If we could only make him laugh on the wrong side of his mouth. That’s the secret. He told me so. But I don’t know
