‘It’s your work, Princess,’ he said. ‘I can [p114 only promise to do anything a hedge-pig can do. It’s not much. Of course I could die for you, but that’s so useless.’
‘Quite,’ said she.
‘I wish I were invisible,’ he said dreamily.
‘Oh, where are you?’ cried Ozyliza, for the hedge-pig had vanished.
‘Here,’ said a sharp little voice. ‘You can’t see me, but I can see everything I want to see. And I can see what to do. I’ll crawl into my box, and you must disguise yourself as an old French governess with the best references and answer the advertisement that the wicked king put yesterday in the “Usurpers Journal.”’
The Queen helped the Princess to disguise herself, which, of course, the Queen would never have done if she had known about the arrows; and the King gave her some of his pension to buy a ticket with, so she went back quite quickly, by train, to her own kingdom.
The usurping King at once engaged the French governess to teach his cook to read French cookery books, because the best recipes are in French. Of course he had no idea that there was a princess, the Princess, beneath the governessial disguise. The French lessons were from 6 to 8 in the morning and from 2 to 4 in the afternoon, and all the rest of the time the governess could spend as she liked. She [p115 spent it walking about the palace gardens and talking to her invisible hedge-pig. They talked about everything under the sun, and the hedge-pig was the best of company.
‘How did you become invisible?’ she asked one day, and it said, ‘I suppose it was Benevola’s doing. Only I think every one gets one wish granted if they only wish hard enough.’
On the fifty-fifth day the hedge-pig said, ‘Now, Princess dear, I’m going to begin to get you back your kingdom.’
And next morning the King came down to breakfast in a dreadful rage with his face covered up in bandages.