Wooden’s aunt bridled. “And who are you, I should like to know,” she burst out, “to call me common? Common yourself! I dare say you think yourself very grand now, talking to a Majesty, but I’ve seen you dressed in dirty pink flannelette, and held head-downwards by one foot, over there. So there now, Miss Superior! Common, indeed! I’ll learn you!”
From these two speeches, Peggy understood that when dolls in Toyland talked about the world of real people they called it “over there.”
“Peace, woman!” ordered the King in an angry voice. “How dare you make a brawl in my royal palace?”
Wooden’s aunt was affected by the majesty of his demeanour, which was certainly that of a King, though not perhaps of a good king. She shrank back, and Selim went on: “I have no idea of marrying this woman, Norval, and I wonder at your suggesting such a thing. But before we talk about that I should like to know how it comes about that a wax doll is brought into my presence, when I have given orders that all Waxes are to be imprisoned. And I should also like to know who this human child is, and how she comes here. It looks to me very much like prying.”
King Selim had very bushy eyebrows, and he bent them with a terrific frown upon Peggy and Lady Grace, as he spoke.
Lady Grace shrank back, evidently frightened by Selim’s anger. But Peggy wasn’t frightened at all. She knew somehow that she had nothing to fear from a chess king, however angrily he might look at her. She even thought that she might be able to do something to save Lady Grace, if the King tried to punish her for being wax. But at present she thought she had better keep quiet, and see what happened.
The Lord Chancellor did not seem to be frightened of the new King either. He said, in a chatty sort of way, “Now those are both very interesting questions, your Majesty, and I shall be delighted to discuss them with you. Then there’s the question of your marriage to be decided, and several other little matters, which will give us quite an agreeable discussion, if we take them one by one. What I say is, let’s have an Audience.”
The King stepped back on to the daïs and whispered to Rose, who shrugged her shoulders and looked disagreeable, but did not seem to be able to object to the proposal.
“Very well,” said the King, seating himself on his throne. “We’ll have an Audience.”
The Lord Chancellor seemed pleased at the idea of an Audience. “Bring in the Woolsack,” he said to the royal servant dolls, who were standing round the daïs; and two of them went out, and came back with a large sack of wool, which they placed in the middle of the Hall. The Lord Chancellor took his seat on it, facing the throne, but it was so soft that he fell back into it, and it covered him up so completely that only two little thin legs could be seen sticking into the air. But the two royal servants quickly rescued him, and sat him in the middle of the sack, which bulged up all round him. He laughed in a very good-humoured way at his mishap, and said, “Now the rest of you take your seats, please, and then we’ll begin.”