Page:The Complete Works of William Makepeace Thackeray Vol.20.pdf/239

Rh that my sovereign would think of putting me to a felon’s death!”

“A hundred thousand plagues upon you! Can’t you see that while you are talking my Bulbo is being hung?” screamed the Princess.

“By Jove! she’s always right, that girl, and I’m so absent,” says the King, looking at his watch again. “Ha! Hark, there go the drums! What a doosid awkward thing though!”

“O Papa, you goose! Write the reprieve, and let me run with it,” cries the Princess—and she got a sheet of paper, and pen and ink, and laid them before the King.

“Confound it! Where are my spectacles?” the Monarch exclaimed. “Angelica! Go up into my bedroom, look under my pillow, not your mamma’s; there you’ll see my keys. Bring them down to me, and—Well, well! what impetuous things these girls are!” Angelica was gone, and had ran 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! !” 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 Marketplace, 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