Well, the day was hot, and the cake was heavy, and before long the Queen was lying fast asleep under a big tree.
Suddenly a terrible roar awakened her, and she looked round for her cake to throw to the angry lions, but to her horror it was gone.
"What is to become of me?" cried the poor Queen in terror, and she burst into tears.
"Hem! hem!" cried a small voice, and the Queen looked all around her to see who could be speaking.
At last she looked upward, and there, in the branches of the big orange tree overhead, sat a little yellow man. He was just half a yard high, and he was eating oranges as quickly as ever he could; in fact, he didn't even stop eating while he spoke to the Queen, which, of course, was very rude.
"Ah, Queen!" he went on, "there is only one way by which you can escape the lions, and that is by letting me marry your daughter."
The Queen was so surprised that she even stopped crying. The idea of that hideous little creature marrying her beautiful daughter was quite absurd, and she was just about to tell him so when again she heard the dreadful roaring of the lions. "Be quick and make up your mind!" cried the Yellow Dwarf. (He was called the Yellow Dwarf, you know, because he lived in the orange tree, and he had eaten so much of the fruit that his skin had become the same color.) "Just remember you have no cake to throw to the lions."
So, to save her life, the Queen was forced to give her consent to a marriage between the Yellow Dwarf and her beautiful daughter.
No sooner did she agree to the match than she began to feel very drowsy, and the next minute the Queen found herself safely back in her own palace.
She was so filled with sadness at the thought of her promise to the dwarf that a fit of deep gloom settled upon her, and for weeks she never smiled.