a very friendly Djinn called
Akraig. He used to feed the little fishes in the sea three times a day,
and his wings were made of pure copper. I put him in to show you what a
nice Djinn is like. He did not help to lift the Palace. He was busy
feeding little fishes in the Arabian Sea when it happened.]

So he stamped once more, and that instant the Djinns let down the Palace
and the gardens, without even a bump. The sun shone on the dark-green
orange leaves; the fountains played among the pink Egyptian lilies; the
birds went on singing, and the Butterfly's Wife lay on her side under
the camphor-tree waggling her wings and panting, 'Oh, I'll be good! I'll
be good!'

Suleiman-bin-Daoud could hardly speak for laughing. He leaned back all
weak and hiccoughy, and shook his finger at the Butterfly and said, 'O
great wizard, what is the sense of returning to me my Palace if at the
same time you slay me with mirth!'

Then came a terrible noise, for all the nine hundred and ninety-nine
Queens ran out of the Palace shrieking and shouting and calling for
their babies. They hurried down the great marble steps below the
fountain, one hundred abreast, and the Most Wise Balkis went statelily
forward to meet them and said, 'What is your trouble, O Queens?'

They stood on the marble steps one hundred abreast and shouted, '_What_
is our trouble? We were living peacefully in our golden palace, as is
our custom, when upon a sudden the Palace disappeared, and we were left
sitting in a thick and noisome darkness; and it thundered, and Djinns
and Afrits moved about in the darkness! _That_ is our trouble, O Head
Queen, and we are most extremely troubled on account of that trouble,
for it was a troublesome trouble, unlike any trouble we have known.'

Then Balkis the Most Beautiful Queen--Suleiman-bin-Daoud's Very Best
Beloved--Queen that was of Sheba and Sabie and the Rivers of the Gold of
the South--from the Desert of Zinn to the Towers of Zimbabwe--Balkis,
almost as wise as the Most Wise Suleiman-bin-Daoud himself, said, 'It is
nothing, O Queens! A Butterfly has made complaint against his wife
because she quarrelled with him, and it has pleased our Lord
Suleiman-bin-Daoud to teach her a lesson in low-speaking and humbleness,
for that is counted a virtue among the wives of the butterflies.'

Then up and spoke an Egyptian Queen--the daughter of a Pharaoh--and she
said, 'Our Palace cannot be plucked up by the roots like a leek for the
sake o