‘HER IMPERIAL HIGHNESS IS SURPRISED!’
“What is it?” the Empress said faintly, as she put her spy-glass to her eye. “Why, it’s Spinach, I declare!”
“Her Imperial Highness is surprised,” the Professor explained to the attendants: and some of them clapped their hands. The Head-Cook made a low bow, and in doing so dropped a spoon on the table, as if by accident, just within reach of the Empress, who looked the other way and pretended not to see it.
“I am surprised!” the Empress said to Bruno. “Aren’t you?”
“Not a bit,” said Bruno. “I heard——” but Sylvie put her hand over his mouth, and spoke for him. “He’s rather tired, I think. He wants the Lecture to begin.”
“I want the supper to begin,” Bruno corrected her.
The Empress took up the spoon in an absent manner, and tried to balance it across the back of her hand, and in doing this she dropped it into the dish: and, when she took it out again, it was full of spinach. “How curious!” she said, and put it into her mouth. “It tastes just like real spinach! I thought it was an imitation—but I do believe it’s real!” And she took another spoonful.
“It wo’n’t be real much longer,” said Bruno.
But the Empress had had enough spinach by this time, and somehow—I failed to notice the exact process—we all found ourselves in the Pavilion, and the Professor in the act of beginning the long-expected Lecture.