We instantly decided to go to the fête.
"I've been to a Primrose fête, and so have you, Dora," Oswald remarked, "and people are so dull at them, they'd gladly give gold to see the dark future. And, besides, the villages will be unpopulated, and no one at home but idiots and babies and their keepers."
So we went to the fête.
The people got thicker and thicker, and when we got to Sir Willoughby's lodge gates, which have sprawling lions on the gate-posts, we were told to take the donkey cart round to the stable-yard.
This we did, and proud was the moment when a stiff groom had to bend his proud stomach to go to the head of Bates's donkey.
"This is something like," said Alice, and Noël added:
"The foreign princes are well received at this palace."
"We aren't princes, we're gipsies," said Dora, tucking his scarf in. It would keep on getting loose.
"There are gipsy princes, though," said Noël, "because there are gipsy kings."
"You aren't always a prince first," said Dora; "don't wriggle so or I can't fix you. Sometimes being made a king just happens to some one who isn't any one in particular."