, if it doesn't--that is to say, a thing is
firm if it can't _move_."

"Like a house?"

"Well, something like that. This chair, for instance," and I put my hand
on her chair, "is firm because you can't shake it. You see, it's
quite---- Hallo, what's that?"

"Oh, you bad Uncle, you've knocked the castor off again," cried Margery,
greatly excited at the incident.

"This is too much," I said bitterly. "Even the furniture is against me."

"Go on explaining," said Margery, rocking herself in the now wobbly
chair.

I decided to leave "firm." It is not an easy word to explain at the best
of times, and when everything you touch goes and breaks itself it
becomes perfectly impossible.

"Well, so much for that," I said. "And now we come to 'rails.' You know
what rails are?"

"Like I've got in the nursery?"

This was splendid. I had forgotten these for the moment.

"Exactly. The rails your train goes on. Well then, '_Home_ Rails' would
be rails at _home_."

"Well, I've _got_ them at home," said Margery in surprise. "I couldn't
have them anywhere else."

"Quite so. Then 'Home Rails Firm' would mean that--er--home rails
were--er--firm."

"But mine aren't, because they wobble. You know they do."

"Yes, but----"

"Well, why do they say 'Home Rails Firm' when they mean 'Home Rails
Wobble'?"

"Ah, that's just it. The point is that when they say 'Home Rails Firm,'
they don't mean that the rails _themselves_ are firm. In fact, they
don't mean at all what you think they mean. They mean something quite
different."

"What _do_ they mean?"

"I am just going to explain," I said stiffly.

. . . . .

"Or perhaps I had better put it this way," I said ten minutes later.
"Supposing---- Oh, Margery, it _is_ difficult to explain."

"I _must_ know," said Margery.

"_Why_ do you want to know so badly?"

"I want to know a million million times more than anything else in the
whole world."

"Why?"

"So as I can tell Angela," said Margery.

I plunged into my explanation again. Angela is three, and I can quite
see how important it is that she should be sound on the question.

THE KING'S SONS

_"Tell me a story," said Margery._

_"What sort of a story?"_

_"A fairy story, because it's Christmas-time."_

_"But you know all the fairy stories."_

_"Then tell me a new fairy story."_

_"Right," I said._

Once upon a time there was a King who had three so