“Oh! the enchantress! the beautiful, beautiful, golden strawberry. I shall not only supply delicious butter to my friend over yonder, but it will come to him as from the hands of an artist. Isn’t the idea charming?” “Beautiful!” “Charming!” “Exquisite!” Each cherry lip had some epithet of praise to bestow on Dame Tillery’s pretty device, except that of the Duchess de Polignac. She swept discontentedly toward the window, jealous even of this woman of the people, as she had been for years of any one who approached the queen. “Shall we never be admitted to take our share in the work?” cried one of the young men who had been making a vain attempt to cut grass. “In the folly, you mean,” answered the duchess, angrily; “for my part, this practice, which brings one on a level with women of the city, becomes repelling.” “Ah! that is because you have no taste for simple pleasures like her majesty, who evidently finds them charming.” “And you?” questioned the duchess. “I,” answered the young man, with a thrill of deep feeling in his voice, “I shall never have the audacity to condemn anything that gives relief to the existence our royal lady must find so full of care.” The duchess gave him a keen look, which brought the blood to his face; but that moment Marie Antoinette lifted up the wooden mould, and bade them all look on while her first strawberry was forming. When it fell, round and perfect, into the silver dish, a little shout rang up from the crowd. With a group of admirers watching each graceful movement, she proceeded to fill her dish, and thus accomplished what seemed to her a great triumph. By this time the day was drawing to a close; a tinge of gold melted into the atmosphere from the coming sunset, and gleams of crimson shot in and out through the great elms in the Park. The cows, which had been driven up to the cottage ready for milking, began to low, as if they were getting weary of standing there, hoof deep, in the velvet grass. While others, still wandering in the Park, answered back with something like general dissatisfaction. “Now for the milking,” cried the queen, taking a pail from one of the brackets. “Each one find a stool for herself, and this good dame shall teach us how to be less awkward.” Obeying this suggestion, each lady took her pail in one hand, with a stool in the other, and went forth into the soft grass, where a dozen cows were waiting to be milked. Here the gentlemen came into active service, and made laughable attempts at milking in company with the ladies. Dame Tillery had placed her ample proportions on the broadest stool she could find, and was sending double streams of liquid whiteness into the pail lodged against her knees, while the queen and Elizabeth looked on, when a shout started the animal she was milking. It made a leap, struck the pail with its foot, and overturned that and Dame Tillery into the grass, where she lay clutching at her stool, and crying lustily for help.