The royal
lady kept her seat with perfect ease, and when she came opposite the
children, she checked her steed, halted, and gazed down upon them.
"Have you forgotten me?" she said. Then she smiled and they knew her
at once. It was the corn-cob doll! Though she had grown so much larger
and seemed so much grander, yet she looked just the same as when they
had taken her out of Aunt Jane's sandal-wood box from which, the
children now remembered, certain tin soldiers and a three-legged
wooden horse had also come! The Queen still wore her flowing
greeny-yellow gown, her hair was braided in two long braids that hung
over her shoulders, and she carried her quaint little head high, in
truly royal fashion.
Now she dismounted gracefully from her horse and came toward the
children, holding out her hand. They dared not look her in the face.
They were all three ashamed to speak to her, and especially Rudolf who
remembered only too clearly all the unkind things he had said about
the corn-cob doll, and how very, very near he had come to roasting her
over the nursery fire! Whatever would happen, thought he, if any of
her subjects who seemed to stand in such awe of her, should find out
that attempt on their Queen's life? Captain Jinks would probably think
imprisonment on bread and water entirely too good for him, probably it
would be slow torture.
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