"If I be's I, as I suppose I be,
I have a little dog at home, and he knows me!"
and that when she found out who she really was, it was as grateful to her as was the little dog's joyous bark to the unfortunate woman, doubtful of her own identity.
When Cornelia entered, Mary said to her: "Does your majesty feel very sore from your fall?"
"Very little bruised, indeed."
"Physically, I presume that you feel nothing; but you must suffer mentally," remarked Ellen. "For a queen to be so disgraced, and for a moment's pride to be brought down to the rank of a subject, and of a divorced wife, is indeed a dreadful fate."
"A lofty mind," replied Cornelia, "can bear reverses."
"True," rejoined Charlie. "I rejoice to see your majesty bear up so nobly: it is well that pride can sustain you in adversity, since it occasioned your descent. And yet, do you know, most sovereign lady, I have always entertained the idea that the reason you refused, in obedience to your royal husband's command, to unveil your beauty to the court, was not so much modesty and pride, as the fact of an unfortunate pimple upon your nose, and a sty upon your eye, which had the effect of making you look uncommonly ugly."
"Shame, ungallant sir! never, unless my silver mirror deceived me, did I look more lovely. But if the laws of the Medes and Persians cannot be changed, neither can the modest customs of their women be altered, even at the command of the King, of Ahasuerus himself. I stand here, a martyr to the rights of my sex: I, Vashti, queen of Persia, and of all the ends of the earth, have proved myself to be strong in will, and the champion of womanhood. I shall appear before all eyes as the first asserter of woman's rights. But oh! that Jewish girl! that modest, shrinking, beauteous, hateful Esther! that she should wear my crown!"
"Well done, Cornelia! you have entered into the spirit of the game. And now Charlie should go out, as you caught the idea from him."