68 THE SECOND FROGGY FAIRY BOOK.

screamed. The little boy turned to her with a
merry laugh.

_ “We're driving foun the looking-glass
room,” he said.

That which had escaped Elsie’s notice, she
now perceived: the walls’ were hung closely
with mirrors, and it was the reflections around
the room of themselves and their single turn-
out that had startled Elsie.

The wooden steed clattered along amaz-
ingly. The boy drove from the looking-glass
rvom into a low-ceilinged place filled with soft
lights. These shone from above, in and
through a substance that looked like water.
Elsie’s host explained ;

“That is the Palace aquarium.* You see
the water through a glass ceiling.”

So it was water, and it teemed with gold
fish, and was illumined by numerous bulbs of
electric light. Elsie asked:

“ Whose is this palace ?”

The boy blushed.

“It’s mine, now that the Hop-toad King is
dead,” he said modestly.

The little girl could not help thinking again
of Billy Jones: ‘“ How ‘stuck-up’ he was, just
because his papa gave him a new goat-cart!”

 

*A pond or a tank of glass for fishes.