Once on a Time

by A. A. Milne

At midnight, then, he started out. The Chancellor awaited his return with some anxiety. This might well turn out to be the decisive stroke (or strokes) of the war. For centuries past the ruling monarchs of Barodia had been famous for their ginger whiskers. "As lost as the King of Barodia without his whiskers" was indeed a proverb of those times. A King without a pair, and at such a crisis in his country's fortunes! It was inconceivable. At the least he would have to live in retirement until they grew again, and without the leadership of their King the Barodian army would become a rabble.

The Chancellor was not distressed at the thought; he was looking forward to his return to Euralia, where he kept a comfortable house. It was not that his life in the field was uninteresting; he had as much work to do as any man. It was part of his business, for instance, to test the pretentions of any new wizard or spell-monger who was brought into the camp. Such and such a quack would seek an interview on the pretext that for five hundred crowns he could turn the King of Barodia into a small black pig. He would be brought before the Chancellor.

"You say that you can turn a man into a small black pig?" the Chancellor would ask.

"Yes, your lordship. It came to me from my grandmother."

"Then turn me," the Chancellor would say simply.

The so-called wizard would try. As soon as the incantation was over, the Chancellor surveyed himself in the mirror. Then he nodded to a couple of soldiers, and the impostor was tied backwards on to a mule and driven with jeers out of the camp. There were many such impostors (who at least made a mule out of it), and the Chancellor's life did not lack excitement.

But he yearned now for the simple comforts of his home. He liked pottering about his garden, when his work at the Palace was finished; he liked, over the last meal of the day, to tell his wife all the important things he had been doing since he had seen her, and to impress her with the fact that he was the holder of many state secrets which she must not attempt to drag from him. A woman of less tact would have considered the subject closed at this point, but she knew that he was only longing to be persuaded. However, as she always found the secrets too dull to tell any one else, no great harm was done.

"Just help me off with this cloak," said a voice in front of him.

The Chancellor felt about until his hands encountered a solid body. He undid the cloak and the King stood revealed before him.

"Thanks. Well, I've done it. It went to my heart to do it at the last moment, so beautiful they were, but I nerved myself to it. Poor soul, he slept like a lamb through it all. I wonder what he'll say when he wakes up."