n I can remember. Some of
them had very nice things, and others would have closed out their stock
for seven cents. The liveliest and brightest of all these was a tall,
slim, black, elastic, smooth-tongued young girl, named Priscilla. She
nearly always wore shoes, which distinguished her from her
fellow-countrywomen. Her eyes sparkled like a fire-cracker of a dark
night, and she had a mind as sharp as a fish-hook. The moment Corny
mentioned her she was elected emissary.

We determined, however, to be very cautious in disclosing our plans to
her. We would sound her, first, and make a regular engagement with her.

"It will be a first-rate thing for me," said Corny, "to have a girl to
go about with me, for mother said, yesterday, that it wouldn't do for me
to be so much with boys. It looked tomboyish, she said, though she
thought you two were very good for boys."

"Are you going to tell your father and mother about this?" asked
Rectus.

"I think I'll tell mother," said Corny, "because I ought to, and I don't
believe she'll object, if I have a girl along with me. But I don't think
I'll say anything to father just yet. I'm afraid he'd join."

Rectus and I agreed that it might be better to postpone saying anything
to Mr. Chipperton.

It was very true that the queen did not live in a palace. Her house was
nearly large enough to hold an old-fashioned four-posted bedstead, such
as they have at my Aunt Sarah's. The little room that was cut off from
the main apartment was really too small to count. The queen was hard at
work, sitting on her door-stone by the side of her bits of sugar-cane
and pepper-pods. There were no customers. She was a good-looking old
body, about sixty, perhaps, but tall and straight enough for all queenly
purposes.

She arose and shook hands with us, and then stepped into her door-way
and courtesied. The effect was very fine.

"This is dreadful!" said Corny. "She ought to give up this pepper-pod
business right away. If I could only talk to her, I'd make her
understand. But I must go get somebody for an interpreter."

And she ran off to one of the neighboring huts.

"If this thing works," said Rectus, "we ought to hire a regular
interpreter."

"It wont do to have too many paid officials," said I, "but we'll see
about that."

Corny soon returned with a pleasant-faced woman, who undertook to
superintend our conversation with the queen.

"What's her name--to begin with?" asked Corny, of the woman