to ground, and were now standing about on one leg with folded wings and an air of detachment. The Marshal alighted and advanced slowly towards the Stimpsons while the heralds sounded their trumpets.
He made a formidable and warrior-like figure in his golden half-armour of a kind unknown to antiquarians, and great jack-boots of gilded leather. He was tall, and the towering mass of waving feathers that crowned his helmet made him look taller still. His vizor was raised, showing a swarthy, hook-nosed face, with quick, restless eyes like a lizard's, a fierce moustache, and a bristling beard that spread out in a stiff black fan.
"You had better speak to him, Sidney," whispered his wife, overcome by sudden panic; "I really can't."
"Er – " began Mr. Stimpson nervously, "I believe I have the pleasure of addressing the Regent. We – we're the new King and Queen, you know, and these are the other members of the family."
The Marshal seemed a little taken aback at first, but he promptly recovered himself, and bending so low that his feathers brushed Mrs. Wibberley-Stimpson's nose, he placed in her hand a small velvet-covered baton studded with gold stars.
"Oh, thank you very much, I'm sure," she said. "It's quite charming. Has it got an address or anything inside it?"
"The symbol of my authority, your Majesty," he said, with soldierly curtness. "I have long desired to surrender it to hands more worthy to govern than mine."
"Very handsome of you to say so," replied Mr. Stimpson; "but I daresay you aren't altogether sorry to get out of it, eh?"
"It is too lofty a position, Sire, for a rough, simple warrior like myself," he said. "Nothing but a sense of duty to my country would have made me accept the Regency at all."
"I am sure," said Mrs. Wibberley-Stimpson, "we shall find you have carried on the Kingdom for us as satisfactorily as possible."
"The people appeared to think so, your Majesty. But I am forgetting the chief purpose I am here for. I have the honour to announce that the procession will shortly be on its way to escort your Majesties to your Coronation, which is to take place this morning in the great church of Eswareinmal."
"Coronation!" Mrs. Wibberley-Stimpson almost screamed. "Before we have so much as had our breakfast! And in these things we are wearing now! I never heard of anything so preposterous!"
"I don't care much myself," said Mr. Stimpson, "about being crowned on an empty – without having had something to eat – if it's only an egg."
"If they're going to crown the Guv'nor in a dinner-jacket and white tie," Clarence muttered to Edna, "we shall never hear the last of it, that's all!"
"There is nothing to make a fuss about, my dear," said the Court Godmother to Mrs. Wibberley-Stimpson, as though she were addressing a froward child; "look behind you, and you will see that everything you may require is already provided."
They looked and saw two velvet Marquees, one striped in broad bands of apple-green and mazarine blue, the other in pale rose and cream, which a party of attendants had just finished putting up. "In those pavilions," continued the Fairy, "you will find not only food prepared for you, but robes such as are fitting for a Coronation. You will have plenty of time both to eat and change your dress before the procession can possibly arrive."
"She's not likely to have got our measurements right," grumbled Mrs. Wibberley-Stimpson to her eldest daughter, as they moved towards the rose-and-cream Pavilion. "I should have much preferred to be fitted by a Court dressmaker. Such a mistake to rush things like this! I rather like that Marshal, Edna; there's something very gentlemanly and straightforward about him, though I can't see why he shouldn't wear a proper uniform instead of that absurd armour."
"Shan't be sorry to get some breakfast, my boy," Mr. Stimpson remarked, as he and Clarence were making for the other marquee; "I feel a bit peckish after being so long in the night air."
"I should like a tub first, Guv'nor."
"I'm afraid," said Mr. Stimpson, "that's expecting too much in these parts."
However, on entering, they discovered, in addition to the delicacies and gorgeous costumes laid out for them, two great crystal baths filled with steaming water which exhaled a subtle but delicious perfume.
"Doing us proud, eh, Guv'nor?" was Clarence's comment on the general luxuriousness; and his father admitted that "everything seemed to have been done regardless of expense."
While the male and female members of the Royal Party were enjoying the privacy of their respective tents, the Marshal outside was expressing his sentiments to the Court Chamberlain with much vigour and freedom.
"Well, Baron," he began, "this is a great service you have done Märchenland, and I hope you are feeling proud of yourself!"
"Oh, as for that, Marshal," modestly replied the ingenuous Baron, "I have done no more than my duty."
"The devil take you and your duty," growled the Marshal. "Why, in the name of all the fiends, couldn't you have left things as they were?"
"But, Marshal," the Baron protested, "when our learned Astrologer Royal discovered the whereabouts of our lawful Queen, you were loudest in approval of my expedition!"
"How could I oppose, after you had been gabbling and cackling about it to the whole Court, and it had even reached the ears of the people? Besides, I was given to understand that this daughter of Chrysopras's was a mere girl. If she had been – But what have you brought us? – a middle-aged matron with a husband and family!"
"I own it was not what I had expected," said the Baron; "but since it was so, what could I do but bring them all?"
"Do? Left them where they were, of course – come back and said that that little fool of a Xuriel had made a miscalculation, as he generally does!"
"I should have been a traitor had I thus denied my Queen. For, as you have seen, she bears on her breast the very jewel of her father the Prince, even as the stars foretold."
"Undoubtedly she is his daughter," the Marshal admitted reluctantly. It never occurred to him for a moment – nor would it occur to any of his countrymen – that the pendant was anything but absolutely conclusive proof of Mrs. Wibberley-Stimpson's right to the throne. Märchenland notions of what constitutes legal evidence have always been and remain elementary.
"But it's pretty plain," he went on, "that the young fool must have made a most unworthy marriage to have begotten one so utterly lacking in all queenliness and dignity."
"She will soon acquire both," the Court Chamberlain affirmed stoutly, "as she becomes more accustomed to her position."
"She may," declared the Marshal, "when a frog grows feathers. And this consort of hers! Is he a fit Monarch for Märchenland? Even you, Baron, can hardly say that for him! I may not have been beloved as Regent, but at least I have made my authority respected. But what do such a couple as this know about ruling a country? They'll make a hopeless hash of it!"
"Without guidance, perhaps," the Baron admitted; "but they will have the inestimable advantage, Marshal, of our experience and advice."
"Ha!" said the Marshal. "So they will – so they will! I was forgetting that!"
"No doubt they will submit to our guidance," went on the Baron, "and thus we shall be able to save them from any dangerous indiscretions."
"Just so," agreed the Marshal, with the flicker of a smile.
The Court Chamberlain, at all events, spoke in all sincerity. His hereditary instinct alone would have been enough to ensure his loyalty to his new Sovereigns, whatever he might think of them in private. And they were his own "finds," which gave them an added value in his estimation, as will easily be understood by any collector of curiosities.
CHAPTER IV
CROWNED HEADS
"'Pon my word, my love," Mr. Stimpson exclaimed, as his wife came out of her pavilion in her Coronation Robes and chain, attended by the Court Godmother, "I should hardly have known you! You look majestic! – abso-lute-ly majestic!"
"I wish I could say the same of you,