“O, no.”
“O, I am well aware yours is not a mind to turn complainer but yet I fear, and not for your rest only, but your time. How is that; have you it, as you Ought, at your own disposal?”
“Why not quite,” cried I, laughing. Good heaven! what a question, in a situation like mine!
“Well, that is a thing I cannot bear to think of—that you should want time.”
“But the queen,” cried I, “is so kind.”
“That may be,” interrupted he, “and I am very glad of it but still, time—and to you!”
“Yet, after all, in the whole, I have a good deal, though always uncertain, for, if sometimes I have not two minutes when I expect two hours, at other times I have two hours where I expected only two minutes.”
“All that is nothing, if you have them not with certainty. Two hours are of no more value than two minutes, if you have them not at undoubted command.”
Again I answered, “The queen is so kind;” determined to sound that sentence well and audibly into republican ears.
“Well, well,” cried he, “that may be some compensation to you, but to us, to all others, what compensation is there for depriving you of time?”