THE DIVIDED KINGDOM.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 271, 15 November 1930, Page 3 (Supplement)

THE DIVIDED KINGDOM.

(By NORMAN HUNTER.)

(All Eights Reserved.)

King Vox of Populania, was awfully crafty and frightfully mean. He hated giving things away and he even wore a cardboard crown to save his real one. "Your Majesty," said the Prime Minister, "Prince Billbree has come to claim his reward of half the kingdom for slaying that dragon you had. some bother with last week." . "What!" shrieked the King, going all pale. "Half the kingdom for killing a mere dragon! Ridiculous! Why, I could have put down two-pennyworth of dragon poison and killed it myself," which wasn't true because there isn't any dragon poison, and anyway this dragon was frightfully fierce and the Prince had fought him tooth and nail, knees and elbows, eyebrows and scales, claws and fireworks for three days, so he'd really earned his reward. 'You must' give him half the kingdom," said the Prime Minister. "It says in Rule 42 of the Ruler's Rule Book that half the kingdom is the reward for killing a dragon, though what happens if someone kills three dragons, I don't know." "All right," grunted the King, for he had suddenly thought of a most crafty and dishonest sort of plot. t "The kingdom of Populania," said the King, when the Prince stood before him, "is divided by the River Wattawetwun into two equal parts." He had just looked it up in the Court atlas, so he knew all about it. "Yes," said the Prince, for he'd looked it up too. "Well," went on the King, looking over Ms spectacles at the Prince, "I will toss you which of us have the half north of the river" and which the half south of the river." "Righto," said the Prince, in a very sporting sort of voice, and he tossed up the penny the King gave him. "Heads/' called the King, and heads it was. "I'll have the north half," said His Majesty, "and all the kingdom south i of the .river is yours. Good morning, and mind the mat, there isn't one." Prince Billbree stood looking at his half of the kingdom and not liking it a bit. There was nothing but heaps and heaps of rubbish everywhere. All the shops and gardens and lovely palaces were on the King's side of the.river. The Prince had got the place where the dustbins were emptied. "I've been cheated," he cried, and as ft matter Of fact he had. The bad old King knew all about the rubbish heaps and the penny he gave the Prince to toss up with had a head on both sides—he'd had it in a box of tricks when he was little. So, of course, the King won and chose the nice half of the kingdom. "The Royal rascal!" cried the Prince. "Now all I can do is grow onions, and I hope the smell annoys the King." So he ordered his men to throw all the rubbish into the river while he went off to buy a book on how to grow

onions. But it was early-closing day and by the time he'd waited for it not to be early-closing day,'the men'had thrown all the rubbish into the river. Billions of bottles they flung in, and tons of tins and shoals of old shoes, not to mention heaps of. herring bones, disused sandwiches, cast-off cakes and discarded dough nuts. Half a kingdom full of assorted rubbish they threw plunkety-plop-splash into the river.

"Good gracious!" exclaimed the Prince when he got back with his onion book. "My word, and did I ever!" The half kingdom full of rubbish had blocked up the river. Yes, and so the river had overflowed and gone round another way. Yes, it had. And it had gone right round the north side of the kingdom so that all the kragd° nl 0 f Populania was now south of the river.

"Hurray!" yelled the Prince, throwing his onion book into the river, where it was swallowed by an onion fish. "That means it's all mine now. Long Jive me!" and he dashed off to the palace and claimed the throne.

"As for you," said the Prince to the wicked King, "you are made Lord Chief Dustman. Go and see that all the rubbish is thrown into the river in future." And the Prince made a public park of the other part of the kingdom.