in a dream, it's well worth while. And I don't go back to that
nasty underground kitchen, and me blamed for everything; that I
don't, not till the dream's finished and I wake up with that nasty
bell a rang-tanging in my ears--so I tell you.'

'Are you SURE,' Anthea anxiously asked the Phoenix, 'that she will
be quite safe here?'

'She will find the nest of a queen a very precious and soft thing,'
said the bird, solemnly.

'There--you hear,' said Cyril. 'You're in for a precious soft
thing, so mind you're a good queen, cook. It's more than you'd any
right to expect, but long may you reign.'

Some of the cook's copper-coloured subjects now advanced from the
forest with long garlands of beautiful flowers, white and
sweet-scented, and hung them respectfully round the neck of their
new sovereign.

'What! all them lovely bokays for me!' exclaimed the enraptured
cook. 'Well, this here is something LIKE a dream, I must say.'

She sat up very straight on the carpet, and the copper-coloured
ones, themselves wreathed in garlands of the gayest flowers, madly
stuck parrot feathers in their hair and began to dance. It was a
dance such as you have never seen; it made the children feel almost
sure that the cook was right, and that they were all in a dream.
Small, strange-shaped drums were beaten, odd-sounding songs were
sung, and the dance got faster and faster and odder and odder, till