this rather long letter now, or I shall be
accused of being tedious; but really it gives me almost as much
pleasure to write to you, as it does to receive your letters.
Good-bye. Don't forget that many of you have promised to write to me
again, and that I am always more than glad to welcome any new friends.

Believe me, dear Children,
Yours affectionately,
G. E. FARROW




[Illustration: The Wallypug in London.]

CHAPTER I

HIS MAJESTY AND SUITE ARRIVE


A most extraordinary thing has happened; the Wallypug has been to
London! But there, I am forgetting that possibly you have never read
_The Wallypug of Why_, in which case you will, of course, know nothing
about his Majesty, and so I had better explain to you who, and what,
he is.

To begin with, then, he is a kind of king of a place called Why, which
adjoins the mysterious kingdom of Zum. I am afraid, though, that if
you searched your atlases for a very long while you might not find
either of these places, for the geographers are so undecided as to
their exact position that they have not shown them on the maps at all.
Some little friends of mine, named Girlie and Boy, have been there,
however, and I can tell you, if you like, the way they went. This is
the way to Why:

Just go to bed and shut your eyes
And count one hundred, one by one;
Perhaps you'll find to your surprise
That you're at Why when this is done.

I say _perhaps_, because this only happens when you have been
particularly good all day, and _sometimes_ boys and girls are not
quite as good as they--but there, I won't say what I was going to, for
I am quite sure that it would not apply to you. This is the way to
Zum:

Not when the moon is at its full,
But just a tiny boat-shaped thing,
You _may_ see Pierrot sitting there
And hear the little fellow sing.
If so, just call him, and he'll come
And carry you away to Zum.

There, now, I've told you the way to go to both places, so that, if
you wish to, you can go there whenever you please.

I am telling you all this because one day in the spring Girlie and
Boy, who live in another part of London, came to see me, and we had
been talking about these things for about the hundredth time, I should
think: for these children are never tired of telling me of all the
strange things which happened to them when they journey to these
wonderful places. In fact they were just arguing as to which was the
most interesting place to go to, Why or Zum, when my housekeeper, Mrs.
Putchy, came to the door with the unwelcome news that the carriage had
come for my little friends, and that it was time to say good-bye.
After they had gone I sat staring into the fire wondering where Why
could be, and if there was really such a person as the Wallypug, when
my little dog Dick, who had been lying on the rug before the fire,
suddenly jumped up, and barking excitedly, ran to the other end of the
study, where a picture, which I had bought the day before at an
auction sale, stood leaning against the wall. Now this picture had
been sold very cheap, because no one could tell at all what it was
about, it was so old and dusty, and the colours were so dark and
indistinct. I had bought it hoping that it might prove valuable,
and there it stood till it could be sent to be cleaned and restored.
Imagine my surprise then, when, on following Dick across the study, I
discovered that the colours in the picture had all become bright, and
were working one into the other in the most remarkable way, red
running into green, and blue into yellow, while a little patch of
black in the centre of the picture was whirling round and round in
quite a distracting manner. What could it all mean? I stared and
wondered, till, out of the confusion, there gradually grew shapes
which bore some resemblance to human beings, and, presently, I could
recognize quite distinctly,