So the Commander-in-Chief had limped back to the Castle with his hump up. And because he had a curiously nasty nature, and bore malice a lot, he now sent word by Cooey to say that they must choose between E and exile.
And it is usually considered the greatest misery that can happen to you to be sent out of That Country.
For That Country is the Land-where-you-never-grow-old—so long, that is, as you are good and loving.
Indeed, if you live truly, you grow younger all the time, although your hair turns grey just the same as in Abroad. And when you are so young and so happy that you can bear it no more, then you die.
But directly you begin to go bad, you grow old. And then the right place for you is Abroad, where all the common people live, and grow horrider and horrider every day, and never die.
So naturally everybody born in That Country wants to live there all the time, except when they have to go away to Moonland for one month after marriage: for that is one of the rules.
But if you are not good and loving, then they turn you out, when they find out about you, which they very often don't for a long time, because they are so sweet and simple. And you are supposed to hate nobody in That Country; but if you do, then you try to sort of cuckoo him out by working under him with your wings.
And that was what the Commander-in-Chief, sitting in the Castle-tower, with his toe in a bandage, plotted in his own secret mind to do to the Regiment, because of Goliath.
For the Commander-in-Chief was a real villain, and already growing old.
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