Among his other improvements, the King started municipal omnibuses, which were white and gold. But the pump being near the place where the omnibuses changed horses the conductors used to take the bitter water to wash the omnibuses with, and gradually they became scarlet and blue and green and violet, just as you see them to-day. So now you know the reason of the colour of omnibuses. And this is the end of the Magician’s part of the story.
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When the Magician had been turned into a post, the King said—
“I’m very sorry;” but the Princess said—
“Dear, he deserved it. And being a post is not painful. Let us never think of him again. I have learned many things since I came here. I have something to break to you. Do you think you can bear it?”
“I can bear anything now,” said he, holding her in his arms, and kissing her again, because she was so very dear.
“Well,” said Perihelia, “I am Princess of the Sun, and if I marry you, my own dear King, I shan’t be able to help colouring your pretty white kingdom a little. Just soft sweet colours, dear, and not an inch of plush. We’ll make a law against that the very first thing. And you shall go on teaching your people to be good, and I’ll try to teach them to be happy. Do you think I can?”
The White King smiled. “You’ve taught me,” he said; “but now, before we do anything for the people, let’s go and get married, and we can begin to make the new laws directly we’ve finished breakfast. We shall just have time to be married if we go off to church at once.”
So they went off, and woke up the Archbishop, and were married, and the Archbishop came home with them to breakfast, and afterwards they began to make laws as hard as they could.
The first law was “There is to be no Plush at all in this kingdom.” And now Albanatolia is the most beautiful country in the world, all soft sweet colours and clear pearly white; and the Queen Perihelia has taught the people how to be happy, so the King has very little work to do, for they are good almost without his interfering at all. It is a lovely country. I hope you will go there some day. I went there once but they would not let me stay because I had a black coat on, and gaiters; and the sight of these clothes made the people so unhappy that the Queen asked me as a private and personal favour to go away, and never to come back unless I could come dressed in something like the colours of the clouds at dawn. I have never been able to manage this, and, anyway, I don’t suppose I could find the way there now. But, if you could get the proper dress, perhaps you could?