Thank you, dear. But if you
should succeed in turning that wicked usurper out, Ozyliza, I hope I
shall be a better queen than I used to be. I am learning housekeeping at
an evening class at the Crown-maker's Institute.'

The Princess kissed her parents and went out into the garden to think it
over. But the garden was small and quite full of wet washing hung on
lines. So she went into the road, but that was full of dust and
perambulators. Even the wet washing was better than that, so she went
back and sat down on the grass in a white alley of tablecloths and
sheets, all marked with a crown in indelible ink. And she took the
hedge-pig out of the box. It was rolled up in a ball, but she stroked
the little bit of soft forehead that you can always find if you look
carefully at a rolled-up hedge-pig, and the hedge-pig uncurled and said:

'I am afraid I was asleep, Princess dear. Did you want me?'

'You're the only person who knows all about everything,' said she. 'I
haven't told father and mother about the arrows. Now what do you
advise?'

Erinaceus was flattered at having his advice asked, but unfortunately he
hadn't any to give.

'It's your work, Princess,' he said. 'I can only promise to do anything
a hedge-pig _can_ do. It's not much. Of course I could die for you, but
that's so useless.'

'Quite,' said she.

'I wish I were invisible,' he said dreamily.

'Oh, where are you?' cried Ozyliza, for the hedge-pig had vanished.

'Here,' said a sharp little voice. 'You can't see me, but I can see
everything I want to see. And I can see what to do. I'll crawl into my
box, and you must disguise yourself as an old French governess with the
best references and answer the advertisement that the wicked king put
yesterday in the "Usurpers Journal."'

The Queen helped the Princess to disguise herself, which, of course, the
Queen would never have done if she had known about the arrows; and the
King gave her some of his pension to buy a ticket with, so she went back
quite quickly, by train, to her own kingdom.

The usurping King at once engaged the French governess to teach his cook
to read French cookery books, because the best recipes are in French. Of
course he had no idea that there was a princess, _the_ Princess, beneath
the governessial disguise. The French lessons were from 6 to 8 in the
morning and from 2 to 4 in the afternoon, and all the rest of the time
the governess could spend as she liked. She spent it walking ab