"No, it wasn't," said Corny, gravely. "African was the language of the Court. But the queen was too polite to use it before us, because she knew we did not understand it, and couldn't tell what she might be saying about us."
"Good!" said the tall yellow-legs. "That's very good indeed. Burgan, you owe her one."
"One what?" asked Corny.
"Another answer as good as that, if I can ever think of it," said Mr. Burgan.
Corny did not reply. I doubt if she heard him. Her soul still ached for her fallen queen.
"I tell you what it is," said Mr. Chipperton, who had kept unaccountably quiet, so far. "It's a great pity that I did not know about this. I should have liked nothing better than to be down there when that usurper girl was standing on that throne, or rocking-chair, or whatever it was——"
"Oh, my dear!" said Mrs. Chipperton. "It would never have done for you to have exposed your lung to such a scene of turmoil and confusion."
"Bother my lung!" cried Mr. Chipperton, who was now growing quite excited. "I would never have stood tamely by, and witnessed such vile injustice——"
"We didn't stand tamely by," said I. "We ran wildly after the unjust one."
"I would have stood up before that crowd," continued Mr. Chipperton, "and I would have told the people what I thought of them. I would have asked them how, living in a land like this, where the blue sky shines on them for nothing, where cocoa-nut and the orange stand always ready for them to stretch forth their hands and take them, where they need but a minimum of clothes, and where the very sea around them freely yields up its fish and its conchs,—or, that is to say, they can get such things for a trifling sum,—I would have asked them, I say, how—when free citizens of a republic, such as we are, come from our shores of liberty, where kings and queens are despised and any throne that is attempted to be set up over us is crushed to atoms,—that when we, I say, come over here, and out of the pure kindness and generosity of our souls raise from the dust a poverty-stricken and down-trodden queen, and place her, as nearly as possible, on the throne of her ancestors, and put upon her head a crown,—a bauble which, in our own land, we trample under foot——"