g them down to me, and--Well,
well! what impetuous things these girls are!' Angelica was gone, and had
run up panting to the bedroom, and found the keys, and was back again
before the King had finished a muffin. 'Now, love,' says he, 'you must
go all the way back for my desk, in which my spectacles are. If you
would but have heard me out. . . Be hanged to her! There she is off
again. Angelica! ANGELICA!' When His Majesty called in his LOUD voice,
she knew she must obey, and came back.

'My dear, when you go out of a room, how often have I told you, SHUT THE
DOOR. That's a darling. That's all.' At last the keys and the desk and
the spectacles were got, and the King mended his pen, and signed his
name to a reprieve, and Angelica ran with it as swift as the wind.
'You'd better stay, my love, and finish the muffins. There's no use
going. Be sure it's too late. Hand me over that raspberry jam, please,'
said the Monarch. 'Bong! Bawong! There goes the half-hour. I knew it
was.'

Angelica ran, and ran, and ran, and ran. She ran up Fore Street, and
down High Street, and through the Market-place, and down to the left,
and over the bridge, and up the blind alley, and back again, and round
by the Castle, and so along by the Haberdasher's on the right, opposite
the lamp-post, and round the square, and she came--she came to the
EXECUTION PLACE, where she saw Bulbo laying his head on the block!!! The
executioner raised his axe, but at that moment the Princess came panting
up and cried 'Reprieve!' 'Reprieve!' screamed the Princess. 'Reprieve!'
shouted all the people. Up the scaffold stairs she sprang, with the
agility of a lighter of lamps; and flinging herself in Bulbo's arms,
regardless of all ceremony, she cried out, 'Oh, my Prince! my lord! my
love! my Bulbo! Thine Angelica has been in time to save thy precious
existence, sweet rosebud; to prevent thy being nipped in thy young
bloom! Had aught befallen thee, Angelica too had died, and welcomed
death that joined her to her Bulbo.'

'H'm! there's no accounting for tastes,' said Bulbo, looking so very
much puzzled and uncomfortable that the Princess, in tones of tenderest
strain, asked the cause of his disquiet.

'I tell you what it is, Angelica,' said he, 'since I came here
yesterday, there has been such a row, and disturbance, and quarrelling,
and fighting, and chopping of heads off, and the deuce to pay, that I am
inclined to go back to Crim Tartary.'

'But with me as thy bri