"As sure as I'm alive it's the Queen of Altruria!"
Turning, Beryl rushed back to the Manor.
"Harkness! Harkness!" she cried, bursting in through the door. "Robin's coming! She's here! And she's brought the Queen of Altruria with her! Oh, what'll we do?" For surely some ceremony befitting royalty should be prepared.
"The Queen of what—" cried Mr. Granger and Cornelius Allendyce rushing from the library. "Oh, the girl's crazy—" asserted the lawyer. Nevertheless he ran to the door, followed by Mr. Granger and Harkness and Beryl and Hannah Budge and Chloe, who had heard Beryl's glad cry in the kitchen.
At close range the dilapidated Ford looked even more dilapidated; Robin, letting her royal companion talk terms of payment with the bewhiskered scion of the Forgotten Village, clambered out the moment the car stopped and fell into Beryl's arms. From their shelter, after the briefest instant, she lifted her face to greet her guardian and found him staring at the Queen in a sort of stupid unbelief.
"I brought—" Robin started an introduction, but did not finish. For, recovering, with an obvious effort, his natural manner of politeness, her guardian was hurrying down the steps to the little car.
"Madame Forsyth, I did not expect—"