“_I_ wish you’d come in a different dress, if you _had_ to come,” said Robert; “but it’s no use my wishing anything.”
“No,” said the Queen. “I wish I was dressed—no, I don’t—I wish _they_ were dressed properly, then they wouldn’t be so silly.”
The Psammead blew itself out till the bag was a very tight fit for it; and suddenly every man, woman, and child in that crowd felt that it had not enough clothes on. For, of course, the Queen’s idea of proper dress was the dress that had been proper for the working-classes 3,000 years ago in Babylon—and there was not much of it.
“Lawky me!” said the marrow-selling woman, “whatever could a-took me to come out this figure?” and she wheeled her cart away very quickly indeed.
“Someone’s made a pretty guy of you—talk of guys,” said a man who sold bootlaces.
“Well, don’t you talk,” said the man next to him. “Look at your own silly legs; and where’s your boots?”
“I never come out like this, I’ll take my sacred,” said the bootlace-seller. “I wasn’t quite myself last night, I’ll own, but not to dress up like a circus.”
The crowd was all talking at once, and getting rather angry. But no one seemed to think of blaming the Queen.
Anthea bounded down the steps and pulled her up; the others followed, and the door was shut.
“Blowed if I can make it out!” they heard. “I’m off home, I am.”
And the crowd, coming slowly to the same mind, dispersed, followed by another crowd of persons who were not dressed in what the Queen thought was the proper way.
“We shall have the police here directly,” said Anthea in the tones of despair. “Oh, why did you come dressed like that?”
The Queen leaned against the arm of the horse-hair sofa.
“How else can a queen dress I should like to know?” she questioned.
“Our Queen wears things like other people,” said Cyril.
“Well, I don’t. And I must say,” she remarked in an injured tone, “that you don’t seem very glad to see me now I _have_ come. But perhaps it’s the surprise that makes you behave like this. Yet you ought to be used to surprises. The way you vanished! I shall never forget it. The best magic I’ve ever seen. How did you do it?”
“Oh, never mind about that now,” said Robert. “You see you’ve gone and upset all those people, and I expect they’ll fetch the police. And we don’t want to see you collared and put in prison.”