She brightened up at this, and I heard her murmur with gusto, "Chocolate-room!"
"It's got every sort of chocolate you can think of," I went on: "soft chocolate, with sticky stuff inside, white and pink, what girls like; and hard shiny chocolate, that cracks when you bite it, and takes such a nice long time to suck!"
"I like the soft stuff best," she said: "'cos you can eat such a lot more of it!"
This was to me a new aspect of the chocolate question, and I regarded her with interest and some respect. With us, chocolate was none too common a thing, and, whenever we happened to come by any, we resorted to the quaintest devices in order to make it last out. Still, legends had reached us of children who actually had, from time to time, as much chocolate as they could possibly eat; and here, apparently, was one of them.
"You can have all the creams," I said magnanimously, "and I'll eat the hard sticks, 'cos I like 'em best."
"Oh, but you mustn't!" she cried impetuously. "You must eat the same as I do! It isn't nice to want to eat different. I'll tell you what—you must give me all the chocolate, and then I'll give you—I'll give you what you ought to have!"
"Oh, all right," I said in a subdued sort of way. It seemed a little hard to be put under a sentimental restriction like this in one's own Chocolate-room.
"In the next room you come to," I proceeded, "there's fizzy drinks! There's a marble-slab business all round the room, and little silver taps; and you just turn the right tap, and have any kind of fizzy drink you want."
"What fizzy drinks are there?" she inquired.
"Oh, all sorts," I answered hastily, hurrying on. (She might restrict my eatables, but I'd be hanged if I was going to have her meddle with my drinks.) "Then you go down the corridor, and at the back of the palace there's a great big park—the finest park you ever saw. And there's ponies to ride on, and carriages and carts; and a little railway, all complete, engine and guard's van and all; and you work it yourself, and you can go first-class, or in the van, or on the engine, just whichever you choose."