at first the people of rotundia were quite pleased with the dragon, who lived by the pillar and fed himself from the bun trees, but by-and-by he began to wander. he would creep into the burrows made by the great rabbits; and excursionists, sporting on the downs, would see his long, tight, whiplike tail wriggling down a burrow and out of sight, and before they had time to say, "there he goes," his ugly purple head would come poking out from another rabbit-hole perhaps just behind them or laugh softly to itself just in their ears. and the dragon's laugh was not a merry one. this sort of hide-and-seek amused people at first, but by-and-by it began to get on their nerves: and if you don't know what that means, ask mother to tell you next time you are playing blind man's buff when she has a headache. then the dragon got into the habit of cracking his tail, as people crack whips, and this also got on people's nerves. then, too, little things began to be missed. and you know how unpleasant that is, even in a private school, and in a public kingdom it is, of course, much worse. the things that were missed were nothing much at first a few little elephants, a hippopotamus or two, and some giraffes, and things like that. it was nothing much, as i say, but it made people feel uncomfortable. then one day a favorite rabbit of the princess's, called frederick, mysteriously disappeared, and then came a terrible morning when the mexican lapdog was missing. he had barked ever since the dragon came to the island, and people had grown quite used to the noise. so when his barking suddenly ceased it woke everybody up and they all went out to see what was the matter. and the lapdog was gone!