“I don’t know,” said the poor Princess, and she looked so beautiful that the Magician went straight into the Palace and told the Prime Tailor to sew new rubies all over his new purple plush suit because he was going a-courting.
The very next day Negretti put on the purple plush suit as well as the Royal Crown, and went to the wing of the Palace which the White King had set apart for the Princess Perihelia to live in. Alban’s crown was made of silver and pearls and moonstones, and the new King had ordered a new crown, all gold, and stuck as full of rubies and emeralds and sapphires as a really good Christmas cake is of plums. (I do not mean the cake they call “good, wholesome school cake,” but the kind they have at home when there is a party.) He took all his many-coloured retinue with him, and they waited on the terrace while the Magician knocked at the door.
“Come in,” said the Princess.
“I’ve come to marry you,” said the Magician, coming to the point at once; for he had arranged to have a procession that afternoon, and he was a little pressed for time.
But Perihelia said, “No, thank you.”
The Magician could hardly believe his ears. “But you’ll be Queen of the land,” said he, “and that’s what you’d have been if you’d married my brother, and, I suppose, what you wanted to be.”
“O no, it isn’t,” said she.
“Well, what did you want?” said he.
“I wanted to be the White King’s wife,” said she.
“It’s the same thing,” he said.