to be sure, was caused by the tea. Yet the
_hot_ wasn't any color; oh, dear!

Ken had not practised the art of seeing stories for nothing. He plunged
in with little hesitation, and with a grand flourish.

"My tale is of kings, it is," he said; "ancient kings--Babylonian kings,
if you must know. It was thousands and thousands of years ago they
lived, and you'd never be able to imagine the wonderful cities they
built. They had hanging gardens that were----" Felicia interrupted.

"It's easy to tell where you got _this_ story. I happen to know where
your marker is in the Ancient History."

"Never you mind where I got it," Ken said. "I'm trying to describe a
hanging garden, which is more than you could do. As I was about to say,
the hanging gardens were built one above the other; they didn't really
hang at all. They sat on big stone arches, and the topmost one was so
high that it stuck up over the city walls, which were quite high enough
to begin with. The tallest kinds of trees grew in the gardens; not just
flowers, but big palm-trees and oleanders and citron-trees, and
pomegranates hung off the branches all ready to be picked,--dark greeny,
purpley pomegranates all bursting open so that their bright red seeds
showed like live coals (do you think I'm getting this out of the history
book, Phil?), and they were _this_-shaped--" he drew a pomegranate on
the back of Kirk's hand--"with a sprout of leaves at the top. And there
were citrons--like those you chop up in fruit-cake--and grapes and
roses. The queen could sit in the bottomest garden, or walk up to the
toppest one by a lot of stone steps. She had a slave-person who went
around behind her with a pea-cock-feathery fan, all green and gold and
beautiful; and he waved the fan over her to keep her cool. Meanwhile,
the king would be coming in at one of the gates of the city. They were
huge, enormous brass gates, and they shone like the sun, bright, and the
sun winked on the king's golden chariot, too, and on the soldiers'
spears.

"He was just coming home from a lion-hunt, and was very much pleased
because he'd killed a lot of lions. He was really a rather horrid
man,--quite ferocious, and all,--but he wore most wonderful purple and
red embroidered clothes, the sort you like to hear about. He had a tiara
on, and golden crescents and rosettes blazed all over him, and he wore a
mystic, sacred ornament on his chest, round and covered all over with
queer emblems. He rode past