dishes than I had. They had as well a
turkey, eight raspberry jam tarts, a pine-apple, a melon, a dish of
oysters in the shell, a piece of boiled bacon and a leg of mutton. But
all were equally wooden and uneatable.

Philip and Lucy, growing hungrier and hungrier, pretended with sinking
hearts to eat and enjoy the wooden feast. Wine was served in those
little goblets which they knew so well, where the double glasses
restrained and contained a red fluid which _looked_ like wine. They did
not want wine, but they were thirsty as well as hungry.

Philip wondered what the waiters were. He had plenty of time to wonder
while the long banquet went on. It was not till he saw a group of them
standing stiffly together at the end of the hall that he knew they must
be the matches with which he had once peopled a city, no other
inhabitants being at hand.

When all the dishes had been handed, speeches happened.

'Friends and fellow-citizens,' Mr. Noah began, and went on to say how
brave and clever Sir Philip was, and how likely it was that he would
turn out to be the Deliverer. Philip did not hear all this speech. He
was thinking of things to eat.

Then every one in the hall stood and shouted, and Philip found that he
was expected to take his turn at speech-making. He stood up trembling
and wretched.

'Friends and fellow-citizens,' he said, 'thank you very much. I want to
be the Deliverer, but I don't know if I can,' and sat down again amid
roars of applause.

Then there was music, from a grated gallery. And then--I cannot begin to
tell you how glad Lucy and Philip were--Mr. Noah said, once more in a
whisper, 'Cheer up! the banquet is over. _Now_ we'll have tea.'

'Tea' turned out to be bread and milk in a very cosy, blue-silk-lined
room opening out of the banqueting-hall. Only Lucy, Philip and Mr. Noah
were present. Bread and milk is very good even when you have to eat it
with the leaden spoons out of the dolls'-house basket. When it was much
later Mr. Noah suddenly said 'good-night,' and in a maze of sleepy
repletion (look that up in the dicker, will you?) the children went to
bed. Philip's bed was of gold with yellow satin curtains, and Lucy's was
made of silver, with curtains of silk that were white. But the metals
and colours made no difference to their deep and dreamless sleep.

And in the morning there was bread and milk again, and the two of them
had it in the blue room without Mr. Noah.

'Well,' said Lucy, lookin