It was ever so: at the moment of triumph comes the fall, and the royal Queen becomes the no-account nursery child.
Before the last echo of that great shout had died away among the distant cliffs an agitated animal came pushing through the crowd with the tidings that a fat man was coming along from the eastward. With one accord the whole company ran out to have a look at him.
There he was—a stout, stately man, pacing soberly over the desert; and at the sight of him Baby Jane cried in a tone of bitter annoyance—
'Why, it's Markham!'
'Why, it's Markham!'
Then, after standing for a moment with face bowed down, trying to restrain her tears, she rushed behind the Lion and the Bear, and, crouching between them, burst into loud and decidedly unqueenlike weeping.
'Why do they send for me?' she sobbed, 'just when everything has come right, and I am having such fun and have grown so fond of my beasts?'
Her two big friends were much disturbed by her grief. 'Oh, don't cry, please, don't cry,' they said, and tried to dry her eyes with a corner of her own frock. 'We aren't very hungry, but, if you like, we will try and manage him.'
In the meanwhile Mr. Markham, the butler (for such he was), was equally upset.