There was good
reason why the King shook: his only daughter, the Princess Ariadne
Diana, was probably the fattest princess in the whole world at that
date. So fat was she that she had never walked a step in the dozen
years of her life, being totally unable to progress over the earth by
any method except rolling. And a really beautiful sight it was, too,
to see the Princess Ariadne Diana, in her cloth-of-gold rolling-suit,
faced with green velvet and edged with ermine, with her glittering
crown on her head, trundling along the avenues of the royal gardens,
which had been furnished with strips of rich carpeting for her express
accommodation.
But gratifying as it would have been to the King, her sire, under
other circumstances, to have had such an unusually interesting
daughter, it now only served to fill his heart with the greatest
anxiety on her account. The Princess was never allowed to leave the
palace without a body-guard of fifty knights, the very flower of
the King's troops, with lances in rest, but in spite of all this
precaution, the King shook.
Meanwhile amongst the ordinary people who could not procure an escort
of fifty armed knights for the plump among their children, the ravages
of the Pumpkin Giant were frightful. It was apprehended at one time
that there would be very few fat little girls, and no fat little boys
at all, left in the kingdom.
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