Page:The Yellow Book - 07.djvu/50

 though they have been married for perilously near ten years, are little better than a pair of sweethearts (and jealous sweethearts, at that; you should have been present on a certain evening when we had been having a long talk and laugh over old days in the Latin Quarter, and an evil spirit prompted one of us to regale her Majesty with a highly-coloured account of Theodore's youthful infatuation for Nina Childe! Oh, their faces! Oh, the silence!); and then, witness her devotion to her brother, to her sisters; her fondness for Florimond, for Madame Donarowska, who was her governess when she was a girl, and now lives with her in the Palace.

"I am writing a fairy-tale," Florimond said to her, "about Princess Gugglegoo and Princess Ragglesnag."

"Oh?" questioned the Queen. "And who were they?"

"Princess Gugglegoo was all sweetness and pinkness, softness and guilelessness, a rose full of honey, and without a thorn; a perfect little cherub; oh, such a duck! Princess Ragglesnag was all corners and sharp edges, fire and fret, dark moods and quick angers; oh, such an intolerant, dictatorial, explosive, tempestuous princess! You could no more touch her than you could touch a nettle, or a porcupine, or a live coal, or a Leyden jar, or any other prickly, snaggy, knaggy, incandescent, electric thing. You did have to mind your p's and q's with her! But no matter how carefully you minded them, she was sure to let you have it, sooner or later; you were sure to rile her, one way or another: she was that cantankerous and tetchy, and changeable and unexpected.—And then Well, what do you suppose?"

"I'm waiting to hear," the Queen replied, a little drily.

"Oh, there! If you're going to be grumpy, I won't play," cried Florimond.

"I‘m