have has to be used without laughing. The poor, broken Cockatoucan, like King you-know-who in English history, has never since that sad day smiled again.
The grateful King sent an escort of the whole Army, now no longer dressed in sausage skins, but in uniforms of dazzling beauty, with drums and banners, to see Matilda and Pridmore home. But Matilda was very sleepy. She had been clever for so long that she was quite tired out. It is indeed a very fatiguing thing, as no doubt you know. And the soldiers must have been sleepy too, for one by one the whole Army disappeared, and by the time Pridmore and Matilda reached home there was only one left, and he was the policeman at the corner.
The next day Matilda began to talk to Pridmore about the Green Land and the Cockatoucan and the Villa-residence-King, but Pridmore only said—
“Pack of nonsense! Hold your tongue, do!”
So Matilda naturally understood that Pridmore did not wish to be reminded of the time when she was an Automatic Nagging Machine, so of course, like a kind and polite little girl, she let the subject drop.
Matilda did not mention her adventures to the others at home because she saw that they believed her to have spent the time with her Great-aunt Willoughby.
And she knew if she had said that she had not been there she would be sent at once—and she did not wish this.
She has often tried to get Pridmore to take the wrong omnibus again, which is the only way she knows of getting to the Green Land; but only once has she been successful, and then the omnibus did not go to the Green Land at all, but to the Elephant and Castle.
But no little girl ought to expect to go to the Green Land more than once in a lifetime. Many of us indeed are not even so fortunate as to go there once.
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