[Original]
The King watched the sights from the Balcony of the Palace, and it was quite late before everybody got to bed and the town was quiet again.
At eleven o’clock the next morning the extraordinary Parliament met, and the King was already seated with the Royal Nurse beside him when the Politicians began to arrive. The Advertiser General looked very funny in a short baby’s frock tied up with blue ribbons, while the Lord High Fiddle-de-dee, being rather tall, had adopted a sailor’s suit, and trundled a hoop. The Lord High Adjudicator had overdone the matter and arrived in a. perambulator accompanied by a nurse carrying a feeding-bottle. All the others were dressed as children too, and most of them carried toys, and the noise of the penny trumpets which many of them blew was quite deafening.
(See Frontispiece).
The little King laughed when he saw them, and declared that it was great fun and much better than such a lot of talking about things that he couldn’t understand.
He ordered that all the seats should be taken out of the hall so that they could play games and use the toys which the Statesmen had brought; he had, moreover, insisted on the Lord High Fiddle-de-dee going down on his hands and knees and giving him a ride on his back all round the room. Then they had gone out on to the Terrace which was outside the House of Words and by which the river ran, and the King had screamed with delight when, at Boy’s suggestion, all the old gentlemen played at leapfrog, doing their best to look dignified in these trying circumstances; then when they were all tired out, they went back to the hall again and sat in a ring on the floor looking quite exhausted, while the King demanded Nursery Rhymes.
The Busybody Extraordinary, who had been exerting himself more than all the others in his efforts to please the King, immediately commenced to repeat the following:—
“Sing a song of sixpence,
A pocket full of Rye,
About a foolish serving maid,