“Traitor! Monster!” cried the Sister-in-Law furiously. “Hear him!” she screamed. “He actually has the effrontery to tell us to our faces that he is willing to sell the whole of this kingdom for a horse. Oh! it is too much! the heartless creature! Oh-h!” and the lady sank back and gasped hysterically. At this there was a terrible uproar in the court—the animals stood up on the seats, frantically gesticulating and crying: “Traitor!” “Down with the Wallypug!” “Off with his head!” “Banish him!” “Send him to jail!” while above all could be heard the Cockatoo screaming:
“I told you so. I told you so! Down with the Wallypug! Off with his crown! Dance on his sceptre, and kick his orb round the town.”
The poor Wallypug threw himself on his knees and called out imploringly, “It’s all a mistake,” and I tried in vain to make myself heard above the uproar.
“TRAITOR! MONSTER!” “OFF WITH HIS HEAD!”
The whole assembly seemed to have taken leave of their senses, and for a few moments the utmost confusion prevailed. The creatures nearest to the Wallypug seemed as though they would tear him to pieces in their fury, and if it had not been for his jailers, the Crocodiles, I am convinced they would have done him some injury. “This is outrageous,” I managed to shout at last. “You are making all this disturbance for nothing. What the Wallypug said was merely a quotation from one of Shakespeare’s plays.”
“Oh, it’s all very well to try and blame it on to poor Shakespeare, when you know very well he’s dead and can’t defend himself,” was Madame’s reply. “That’s your artfulness. I’ve no doubt you are quite as bad as the Wallypug himself, and probably put him up to it.”
“Yes. Down with him! Down with the hatless traitor!” screamed the Cockatoo.
And despite our protests the Wallypug and myself were loaded with chains and marched off by the Crocodiles, his Majesty having first been robbed of his crown, sceptre, and orb, and other insignia of Royalty by the Doctor-in-Law, who hadn’t a kind word to say for his old sovereign, and who seemed positively to rejoice at his Majesty’s downfall. I was highly indignant with his heartless ingratitude, but could do positively nothing, while all of my protests were drowned in the babel of sounds made by the furious creatures in the body of the court.