"She may," declared the Marshal, "when a frog grows feathers. And this consort of hers! Is he a fit Monarch for Märchenland? Even you, Baron, can hardly say that for him! I may not have been beloved as Regent, but at least I have made my authority respected. But what do such a couple as this know about ruling a country? They'll make a hopeless hash of it!"
"Without guidance, perhaps," the Baron admitted; "but they will have the inestimable advantage, Marshal, of our experience and advice."
"Ha!" said the Marshal. "So they will—so they will! I was forgetting that!"
"No doubt they will submit to our guidance," went on the Baron, "and thus we shall be able to save them from any dangerous indiscretions."
"Just so," agreed the Marshal, with the flicker of a smile.
The Court Chamberlain, at all events, spoke in all sincerity. His hereditary instinct alone would have been enough to ensure his loyalty to his new Sovereigns, whatever he might think of them in private. And they were his own "finds," which gave them an added value in his estimation, as will easily be understood by any collector of curiosities.
CHAPTER IV
CROWNED HEADS
"'Pon my word, my love," Mr. Stimpson exclaimed, as his wife came out of her pavilion in her Coronation Robes and chain, attended by the Court Godmother, "I should hardly have known you! You look majestic!—abso-lute-ly majestic!"