Yellow-Cap and Other Fairy-Stories For Children

as an experience, it would be good fun; and if one is predestined to it, you know----Besides----'

'Well, your majesty--besides what?'

'Well, for instance, how would you like to be a queen?'

Rosamund stopped churning, wiped her hands on her apron, and tossed up her pretty chin with a saucy air.

'A queen, indeed! I beg to inform you, Master Raymond, that I am a queen already, and I have reigned longer and more despotically than ever you will, I fancy. Pray, has the Queen of England any subjects more devoted to her than my Osmund and Dorimund and Phillimund and Sigismund and Armand, and twenty others, are to me? Honeymead is my kingdom, and I do really reign, because my power is in myself; and fifty giants to march before me, and a hundred dwarfs to carry my train, wouldn't make me a bit more of a queen than I am now. So--thank you for nothing, Master Raymond!'

Raymond sat erect, with a great deal more animation in his look than he had yet shown.

'Listen to me, Rosamund,