o
WOBBLY. Where do you come to next?"

"You go up the steps," I continued, "and in at the door, and the very
first place you come to is the Chocolate-room!"

She brightened up at this, and I heard her murmur with gusto,
"Chocolate-room!"

"It's got every sort of chocolate you can think of," I went on: "soft
chocolate, with sticky stuff inside, white and pink, what girls like;
and hard shiny chocolate, that cracks when you bite it, and takes such a
nice long time to suck!"

"I like the soft stuff best," she said: "'cos you can eat such a lot
more of it!"

This was to me a new aspect of the chocolate question, and I regarded
her with interest and some respect. With us, chocolate was none too
common a thing, and, whenever we happened to come by any, we resorted to
the quaintest devices in order to make it last out. Still, legends had
reached us of children who actually had, from time to time, as much
chocolate as they could possibly eat; and here, apparently, was one of
them.

"You can have all the creams," I said magnanimously, "and I'll eat the
hard sticks, 'cos I like 'em best."

"Oh, but you mustn't!" she cried impetuously. "You must eat the same as
I do! It isn't nice to want to eat different. I'll tell you what--you
must give ME all the chocolate, and then I'll give YOU--I'll give you
what you ought to have!"

"Oh, all right," I said, in a subdued sort of way. It seemed a little
hard to be put under a sentimental restriction like this in one's own
Chocolate-room.

"In the next room you come to," I proceeded, "there's fizzy drinks!
There's a marble-slab business all round the room, and little silver
taps; and you just turn the right tap, and have any kind of fizzy drink
you want."

"What fizzy drinks are there?" she inquired.

"Oh, all sorts," I answered hastily, hurrying on. (She might restrict
my eatables, but I'd be hanged if I was going to have her meddle with my
drinks.) "Then you go down the corridor, and at the back of the palace
there's a great big park--the finest park you ever saw. And there's
ponies to ride on, and carriages and carts; and a little railway, all
complete, engine and guard's van and all; and you work it yourself, and
you can go first-class, or in the van, or on the engine, just whichever
you choose."

"I'd go on the engine," she murmured dreamily. "No, I wouldn't, I'd--"

"Then there's all the soldiers," I struck in. Really the line had to be
drawn somewhere, and I could no