The platform was too high above the market-place to make it convenient for anybody to make a speech from it, even if they had wished to. Wooden did not wish to, not being accustomed to public speaking, but her aunt offered to dance a Highland fling, which her late husband had taught her. This offer was refused, and Wooden’s mother told her to behave herself, and remember where she was.
“Now, I must leave you,” said the Lord Chancellor. “Good-bye, ladies, and a very pleasant imprisonment to you!”
He shook hands affably with all of them, and bowed himself out. He seemed already to have forgotten the compromise he had come to with the people, and they seemed to have forgotten it, too; for Peggy watched him go off, followed by the palace guards, and bowing to right and left. The dolls in the market-place cheered heartily, but none of them stopped him to say anything, and he disappeared round the corner.
“Dolls seem to have very short memories,” said Peggy to herself. She could not help feeling a little unhappy at being shut up in a prison, though it was only a dolls’ prison, and quite different from the stone cells she had read about. She did think that her own Teddy might have done something more to help them. She knew now that he was rather flighty, but surely he need not have gone off like that, and have left his mistress and her friends to be locked up, without trying to do anything to rescue them! She supposed he was amusing himself with his new friends, Mr. and Mrs. Noah, and had forgotten all about her.
But she did Teddy an injustice there, as you will soon see.
The policeman doll came up to see if they wanted anything directly the Lord Chancellor had gone, and brought his wife with him. He was a large, amiable-looking doll, and his wife was nice too. She was dressed as a Swiss peasant, and when she saw Peggy she said, “Bonjour, Mademoiselle! Comment ça va t’il?”
Now Peggy knew a good deal of French already, because her father and mother took her to Etretat every summer for the holidays. So she said at once, “Merci, Madame, ça va bien. Et vous?”
The policeman doll’s wife was delighted to hear her own language spoken, and asked Peggy if she might kiss her. The policeman doll beamed affectionately at them, and said, “Isn’t that clever now? I never could pick up her lingo.”
They said they would like some tea as soon as possible, and apricot jam with it. The policeman doll’s wife, whose name was Mrs. Emma, said that she would bring it up as soon as she had bathed her baby.