“And you are going with me because you must,” Nancy responded. “For listen, Pauline. Although I am affectionate, I can be—oh, yes—dangerous. And if you don’t come, why, I can keep my word. Wednesday is your birthday. I wonder when the crown of the day will come?”
“What do you mean?”
“Why, there always is a crown to a birthday. There is a time, either in the evening or in the morning, when the queen receives the homage of her subjects. She gets her presents, and there are pretty speeches made to her, and she has her dainty feast and her crown of flowers. Yes, that time is the crown of the day, and that is just the moment when the poor little queen shall topple down. The throne shall be knocked from under her; the presents will vanish; the sovereignty will cease to exist. Poor, poor little queen without a kingdom! How will you like it, Paulie? Do you think you could bear it? To have no kingdom and no crown and no presents and no love, and to be bitterly disgraced as well! How will you like it, Paulie?”
“I know that you can do all that you say,” answered Pauline. “I know you can be dreadful, and everything is against me. You can ruin me if you like, but I want you not to do it, Nancy.”
“And if you don’t come with us I want to do it, dear; and I rather think that my will is stronger than yours.”
“But if it kills me?”
“It won’t do that, Paulie. You will feel bad, and, oh! as though somebody had crushed you; but you won’t die. There’s only one way out.”
Pauline was silent.
“It is quite an easy way,” continued Nancy. “It is easy and safe, and there’s a deal of fun to be got out of it. You have got to come to the picnic. Once you are there you will enjoy yourself tremendously. I promise to get you home in the morning. You will come, and you will bring two of your sisters with you. Two will be enough. I have yielded that point. You will meet us here, at this very spot, at eleven o’clock on Wednesday night. We are going some distance away, so that no one in the neighborhood of The Dales need hear our singing and our fun and our jollity. We will come back before daybreak and deposit you just outside the wicket-gate. You may think it very unpleasant just now, and very mean and all the rest, but it is the only possible way to save yourself. You must come to the picnic, and bring two of your sisters.”
“But suppose they won’t come?”