"Yes," said the Lion, "but there is a particular reason for my mouth being large."
"Why?" asked the children.
"On account of all the wisdom I utter," replied the Lion loftily.
"Anyway," said Ridgwell, "it does seem a horrid preparation for a party to start with a fog. Surely nobody would see what was going on."
"Hush, hush, my children," remonstrated the Pleasant-Faced Lion. "Just gather round and listen, and do not interrupt. You will be amazed at all the things you are about to see and hear, for you are going to be present to-night for a few minutes at the most wonderful party ever given in the whole world."
"That will be lovely," said Ridgwell and Christine. "And oh! Lal, really we have looked forward to it so much."
The Lion patted each of the children in turn affectionately upon the head with its paw, and they remembered afterwards that his paw was as soft as velvet, and really wasn't heavy at all.
"Chatter, chatter, chatter," said the Lion, "just like the magpies and the sparrows, and the fashionable Society people for that matter, but you must not interrupt. I am just like one of those guides that do all the talking, and if I am interrupted I lose my place, get all my thoughts out of order, and all the ceremony will be wrong. Then King Richard and King Charles will both be down upon me, and say the party was rotten, and that I was to blame; and as for Boadicea, she has a nasty temper, and will probably hit me over the head with her reins."
"Oh, Lal, do you mean to say that King Richard and King Charles and
Boadicea are coming to the party?"
"Yes, all of them," grunted the Lion. "Now be quiet, and just listen. The sulphur tablets which seem to cause you so much mystification are simply to cause a fog upon the outside of Trafalgar Square, and to shut out the sight of the most wonderful party in the world from the gaze of all the other people who have not been invited to it. Imagine the millions of people who would flock to see such a sight, if it were not screened off. Drivers of the Buzz Buzz things they call motor-buses and taxis, loafers, tramps, idlers, City men, work-girls, curious women—and, by the way, remember that women are always curious—would flock in millions, attracted by the lovely lights, which will be brighter than anything you have ever seen, by the jewels, which will be more dazzling than anything you have ever dreamed of, to say nothing about the gorgeous costumes that will rival anything displayed upon the Field of the Cloth of Gold, outdo the splendours of any court, and put the pageant of the grandest pantomime ever witnessed to shame. Follow me," commanded the Lion, "and you will see what you will see only once in your lives, and it all begins with the sulphur tablets."