“We only waste time here while Titania may be in danger,” he said, with a strong trace of irritation in his tone. “Is not that Dragonfel’s palace over yonder?”
King Stanislaus gazed at the highly expensive but forbidding-looking edifice toward which Florimel pointed.
“Maybe so,” was his guarded response.
“Then let us storm it, and force him to surrender the queen and her companions!”
“Yes, yes!” cried all the Brownies.
But King Stanislaus shook his head in a very decided manner.
“My son, you’re too impulsive,” he said kindly but reprovingly. “Judging from what you’ve told me, for I’ve never seen any of them, each of those fellows must stand full six times as high as one of us, and there may be six times as many besides. We must exercise caution.”
“Have you anything to propose?”
“Nothing just now,” said King Stanislaus. “We must reconnoitre a bit, and get the lay of the land, before considering any plan whatever. An open attack would be entirely out of the question. They’d have the advantage of us in size and maybe numbers. No, no, my boy, we must use Brownie cunning.” Reluctantly Florimel was obliged to admit the force of the shrewd old monarch’s reasoning.
Concerned as he was in mind to rescue Titania as soon as he could, he had no desire by any rash act to imperil or, even worse still, destroy the entire band.