The queen looked up in admiration. “That’s a beautiful answer; how did you think of all those things? But is jasper something to eat?”
King Solomon did not regard the question. “Ask me something else?” he demanded.
“What—what—what did I have for breakfast?”
The king stuck out his tongue derisively. “Can’t you think of a single thing, Hazel Tyler, but food?”
Hazel felt her lack of originality. “Have you had pleasant weather this past week in Jerusalem?” she asked politely.
“It has rained,” replied King Solomon, “for forty days and nights; and great was the fall thereof.”
The king’s answers were so much more impressive than the queen’s questions that Hazel sought for first place.
“Now I shall dance before the king,” she said, and began slowly advancing and receding before King Solomon’s throne, holding up the pink dress as she moved. She looked very pretty and graceful as she made her low courtesies and King Solomon’s eyes gleamed approbation.
“If you like a me, as I like a you,” he began to sing and the Queen of Sheba stepped in a little livelier fashion toward the kitchen door. “’Cause I love you,” he went on, and the little queen danced before him over the door-sill and into the kitchen where she struck against the table and fell in a heap upon the floor.
The singing stopped. Charity stooped to where Hazel sat, a frightened heap. She examined the pink gown. It had a black smudge on the back.