The Queen stopped full in her walk.
“That is very pleasantly put,” she said; “I told Minnie you were a courtier.”
Again the two walked on.
“Then she used her tongue on me?”
“Your Grace, I have never met one on whom she did not: but her heart was true.”
“I know that, I know that, Mr. Norris. Tell me something she said.”
Anthony racked his brains for something not too severe.
“Mistress Corbet once said that the Queen’s most disobedient subject was herself.”
“Eh?” said Elizabeth, stopping in her walk.
“‘Because,’ said Mistress Corbet, ‘she can never command herself,’” finished Anthony.