ad backward.

'You must remember, my spouse,' interposed His Majesty, as if making
excuse for his son, 'he has got the same blood in him. His mother--'

'Don't talk to me of his mother! You positively encourage his
unnatural fancies. Whatever belongs to that mother ought to be cut out
of him.'

'You forget yourself, my dear!' said the king.

'I don't,' said the queen, 'nor you either. If you expect me to
approve of such coarse tastes, you will find yourself mistaken. I
don't wear shoes for nothing.'

'You must acknowledge, however,' the king said, with a little groan,
'that this at least is no whim of Harelip's, but a matter of State
policy. You are well aware that his gratification comes purely from
the pleasure of sacrificing himself to the public good.

Does it not, Harelip?'

'Yes, father; of course it does. Only it will be nice to make her cry.
I'll have the skin taken off between her toes, and tie them up till
they grow together. Then her feet will be like other people's, and
there will be no occasion for her to wear shoes.'

'Do you mean to insinuate I've got toes, you unnatural wretch?' cried
the queen; and she moved angrily towards Harelip. The councillor,
however, who was betwixt them, leaned forward so as to prevent her
touching him, but only as if to address the prince.

'Your Royal Highness,' he said, 'possibly requires to be reminded that
you have got three toes yourself--one on one foot, two on the other.'

'Ha! ha! ha!' shouted the queen triumphantly.

The councillor, encouraged by this mark of favour, went on.

'It seems to me, Your Royal Highness, it would greatly endear you to
your future people, proving to them that you are not the less one of
themselves that you had the misfortune to be born of a sun-mother, if
you were to command upon yourself the comparatively slight operation
which, in a more extended form, you so wisely meditate with regard to
your future princess.'

'Ha! ha! ha!' laughed the queen louder than before, and the king and
the minister joined in the laugh. Harelip growled, and for a few
moments the others continued to express their enjoyment of his
discomfiture.

The queen was the only one Curdie could see with any distinctness. She
sat sideways to him, and the light of the fire shone full upon her
face. He could not consider her handsome. Her nose was certainly
broader at the end than its extreme length, and her eyes, instead of
being horizontal, were s