"Oh, capital; look here!" replied Alphonse, showing a small ivory cage containing about a score of butterflies. "Aren't they beauties?"
The butterflies were unanimously pronounced to be fine ones, and the queen was expressing her admiration of them by a variety of exclamations, when a little boy pushed his way into the crowd, and said, "Oh! please queen, here's your crown; I found it among the bramble bushes."
"Dear me," said Pepitia, "I quite forgot my crown!"
"Why, I've lost mine too!" cried the king, clapping his hand to his head to feel for the crown, which ought to have been there but was not.
"I've got the king's crown! I've got the king's crown!" cried another little fellow, running up from the other side of the dell.
"What a bother the crowns are," said Philip.
"Well, suppose we don't wear them any more to-day," suggested the queen.
"No more we will," replied he; "and we had better take off our trains, for there is no running or doing anything in them, and then you won't go tumbling over yours, Pepitia; we will lay them down here, and we can put them on again when we are going home."
So the trains, crowns, ball, and sceptre were put together in the corner of the dell, and then the king and the queen were ready for a good game of play with the rest of the troop.
"Well, now, what shall we play at next? I'm tired of hunting butterflies," said Alphonse.