Then, "You seem to be on friendly terms with His Majesty," he said.
"Have you showed him how to play the game, too?"

"No," Mary Alice answered, "but I've told him the Secret."


As soon as they could, they escaped--those two--out on to the terrace
where the stars were shining thickly overhead.

"On one of those--those times in New York when we talked together," he
said, "you told me that when something very marvellous had happened to
you and you couldn't believe you were awake, that it was really true,
you asked your Godmother to pinch you. It--er, wouldn't be at all
proper for me to ask you to please pinch me. But if you know any
perfectly proper equivalent, I wish you'd do it."

"I've pinched myself," she returned, "and it seems I am awake. So I
judge you must be, too."

"Then how, please----?"

And she told him.

"And you don't know yet who I am?"

"No."

So he told her. "I warned you it was nothing interesting," he said;
"it is just my work that people are interested in. I don't belong in