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said Tom.
    Uncle James was furious. “What do you mean, sir,” he cried, “by intruding on a State Function with your common rabbits and things? Go away, naughty little boy, and play with them somewhere else.”
    But while he was speaking the rabbits had come up one on each side of him, their great sides towering ever so high, and now they pressed him between them so that he was buried in their thick fur and almost choked. The Princess, meantime, had run to the other side of the pillar and was peeping round it to see what was going on. A crowd hadfollowed the cab out of the town; now they reached the scene of the “State Function”—and they all cried out:
    “Fair play—play fair! We can’t go back on our word like this. Give a thing and take a thing? Why, it’s
never
done. Let the poor exiled stranger dragon have his birthday present.” And they tried to get at Tom—but the guinea-pig stood in the way.
    “Yes,” Tom cried. “Fair play
is
a jewel. And your helpless exile shall have the Princess: if he can catch her. Now then, Mary Ann.”
    Mary Ann looked round the big pillar and called to the dragon: “Boo! You can’t catch me,” and began to run as fast as ever she could, and the dragon after her. When the Princess had run half a mile she stopped, dodged round a tree, and ran back to the pillar and round it, and the dragon after her. You see, he was so long he could not turn as quickly as she could. Round and round the pillar ran the Princess. The first time she ran round a long way from the pillar, and then nearer and nearer—with the dragon after her all the time; and he was so busy trying to catch her that he never noticed that Tom had tied the very end of his long, tight, whipcordy tail to the rock, so that the more the dragon ran round, the more times he twisted his tail round the pillar. It was exactly like winding a top—only the peg was the pillar, and the dragon’s tail was the string. And the magician was safe between the Belgian hares, and couldn’t see anything but darkness, or do anything but choke.

    The dragon after her
    When the dragon was wound on to the pillar, as much as he could possibly be, and as tight—like cotton on a reel—the Princess stopped running, and though she had very little breath left, she managed to say, “Yah—who’s won now?”
    This annoyed the dragon so much that he put out all his strength—spread his great purple wings, and tried to fly at her. Of course this pulled his tail, and pulled it very hard, so hard that as he pulled the tail
had
to come, and the pillar
had
to come round with the tail, and the island
had
to come round with the pillar, and in another minute the tail was loose, and the island was spinning round exactly like a teetotum. It spun so fast that everyone fell flat on their faces and held on tight to themselves, because they felt something was going to happen. All but the magician, who was choking between the Belgian hares, and felt nothing but fur and fury.
    And something did happen. The dragon had sent the kingdom of Rotundia spinning the way it ought to have gone at the beginning of the world, and as it spun round all the animals began to change sizes. The guinea-pigs got small and the elephants got big, and the men and women and children would have changed sizes, too, if they had not had the senseto hold on to themselves, very tight indeed, with both hands; which, of course, the animals could not be expected to know how to do. And the best of it was that when the small beasts got big and the big beasts got small the dragon got small too, and fell at the Princess’s feet—a little, crawling, purple newt with wings.
    “Funny little thing,” said the Princess, when she saw it. “I will take it for a birthday present.”
    But while all the people were still on their faces, holding on tight to themselves, Uncle James, the magician, never thought of holding tight—he only thought of how to punish Belgian hares and the sons of