CHAPTER X
MEETING A QUEEN
First came a large company of soldiers almost exactly like Captain Jinks and the sergeant, except that their uniforms were a little shabbier-looking, and their arms a little less brightly polished. They held themselves stiffly and marched very well, in spite of the fact that many of them had suffered severe injuries, such as the loss of a leg or an arm at the least, in some former campaign, and all of them were rather the worse for wear. After the soldiers came the band, playing shrilly on their tiny instruments, and next, to the children's delight and astonishment, rolled a number of little carriages drawn by mechanical horses. Rudolf was so keenly interested in the working of these mechanical horses, that he hardly noticed the fine ladies who sat stiffly on the cushioned seats of the carriages, very grandly dressed, and holding beautiful pink and blue parasols over their curled heads.
Suddenly Ann grabbed his arm and whispered: "Look, look! Did you see them? Marie-Louise and Angelina-Elfrida, my own dolls, and they never so much as bowed!"
"Perhaps they didn't know you," whispered Rudolf.
"They did, too," returned his sister angrily. "They just laughed and turned their heads the other way, horrid things! Just wait, I'll tell them what I think of them; but, oh, Rudolf, here come more carriages and more dolls in them, and how queerly they are dressed, these last, I mean! I never saw any dolls like them before. See their poke bonnets, and their fringed mantles, and their little hoop-skirts, but, oh, look, look, can that be the Queen?"
Ann's voice sounded disappointed as well as surprised, and in her excitement she spoke so loud that Captain Jinks himself turned his threatening eye on her and called out: "Silence!" But Ann paid no attention to him, nor did the other children; the eyes of all three were fixed upon a little figure who rode all alone at the very end of the procession. They knew she must be the Queen by the respectful way in which Captain Jinks and the sergeant saluted, but she was very different from what they had imagined a Queen to be. The wooden horse which she rode was not handsome, indeed one of his legs was missing, but he pranced and curvetted so proudly upon the remaining three that it seemed as if he knew he carried a Queen upon his back. The royal lady kept her seat with perfect ease, and when she came opposite the children, she checked her steed, halted, and gazed down upon them.
"Have you forgotten me?" she said. Then she smiled and they knew her at once. It was the corn-cob doll! Though she had grown so much larger and seemed so much grander, yet she looked just the same as when they had taken her out of Aunt Jane's sandal-wood box from which, the children now remembered, certain tin soldiers and a three-legged wooden horse had also come! The Queen still wore her flowing greeny-yellow gown, her hair was braided in two long braids that hung over her shoulders, and she carried her quaint little head high, in truly royal fashion.