"Why, there's your homely little friend." "Who?" said the Tyro. "Little Miss--what was it you called her?--oh, yes, Miss Grouch. Strange how these plain girls sometimes attract men, isn't it? Look at the circle around her. Suppose we join it." The Tyro joyfully assented. The Queen welcomed Judge Enderby graciously, and ordered a chair vacated for him; young Mr. Sperry, whose chair it was, obeying with ill grace. The Tyro she allowed to stand, vouchsafing him only the most careless recognition. Was he not a good ten minutes late? And should the Empress of Hearts be kept waiting with impunity? Punishment, mild but sufficient for a lesson, was to be the portion of the offender. She gave him no opportunity to recall their appointment. And with a quiet suggestion she set young Sperry on his trail. Now Mr. Diedrick Sperry, never notable for the most amiable of moods and manners, was nourishing in his rather dull brain a sense of injury, in that he had been ousted from his point of vantage. As an object of redress the Tyro struck him as eminently suitable. From Mrs. Denyse he had heard the story of the pushing young "haberdasher," and his suspicions identified the newcomer. "Say, Miss Cecily," he said, "why 'n't you interdoose your friend to us?" In defense of the Sperry accent, I may adduce that, by virtue of his wealth and position he had felt at liberty to dispense with the lesser advantages of education and culture; therefore he talked the language of Broadway. "What? To all of you?" she said lazily. "Oh, it would take much too long." "Well, to me, anyway," insisted the rather thinly gilded youth. "I bin hearin' about him." "Very well: Mr. Sperry, Mr. Daddleskink." She pronounced the abominable syllables quite composedly. But upon Mr. Sperry they produced an immediate effect. "Wha-at!" he cried with a broad grin. "What's the name?" "Daddleskink," explained the Tyro mildly. "An umlaut over the K, and the final Z silent as in 'buzz.'" "Daddleskink," repeated the other. "Daddle--Haw! haw! haw!!" "Cut it, Diddy!" admonished young Journay, giving him a surreptitious dig in the ribs. "Your work is coarse." Temporarily the trouble-seeker subsided, but presently above the conversation, which had again become general, his cackling voice was heard inquiring from Judge Enderby:-- "Say, Judge, how do you catch a diddleskink? Haw--haw--haw!" This was rather further than the Empress intended that reprisals for _lèse-majesté_ should go. Still, she was curious to see how her strange acquaintance would bear himself under the test. She watched him from the corner of an observant eye. Would he be disconcerted by the brusqueness of the attack? Would he lose his temper? Would he cheapen himself to answer in kind? What _would_ he do or say?