Meanwhile, Malachi, the chief Elder, was having a rather difficult time with the self-willed young Queen. First of all she positively refused to grant him an audience at all; and when at length he succeeded in obtaining admission to her apartments by his persistent representations that the matter upon which he desired to see her was of the most vital importance, she at once angrily ordered him out again as soon as she understood that he had found a new physician whom he desired her to see. But if the Queen was self-willed, Malachi was the very incarnation of pertinacity; he protested, wheedled, entreated, and was indignant by turns, but all to no purpose until he happened to mention that the physician in question was a stranger from a far country beyond the Great Water; when, first commanding him to repeat his statement all over again, she suddenly developed a sweet reasonableness, that caused the astonished Malachi to doubt the evidence of his senses, by announcing that she would see the stranger, who was to be brought into her presence forthwith. CHAPTER SIXTEEN. DICK AND PHIL PROSPER. Determined to afford Her Majesty neither time nor opportunity to repent of her sudden decision, Malachi hastened out of the palace as speedily as his poor old limbs would carry him, and, making the best of his way back to the enormous building in which the strangers were lodged, presented himself in their apartment, which he found them in the act of returning to by way of the window after a stroll round the roof garden outside. Almost incoherent from want of breath and his eagerness to impress upon the pair the necessity to seize the present favourable opportunity, the Elder hastily explained that his mission to the Queen had been successful, and entreated Dick and Grosvenor to accompany him to the palace forthwith; with which request they were of course perfectly ready to comply. The palace was but a bare hundred yards from the larger building, both in fact being built on the same plot of ground, and a few minutes sufficed the trio to pass from the one building to the other, to traverse the noble entrance hall of the palace, and to make their way to the Queen's private suite of apartments, outside the door of which two soldiers armed with spear and target stood on guard. The next moment they were in the presence of the Queen, who, surrounded by some half a dozen ladies, reclined listlessly upon a couch of solid gold gorgeously upholstered in richly embroidered silk. As the trio entered and bowed low before her, the young Queen glanced listlessly at her visitors for a moment, and then a look of interest crept into her eyes, such as Malachi had not seen there for months, causing his heart to leap within him as he wondered whether this young doctor had indeed the power to perform a miracle and effect the cure of the lovely young creature upon whom the hopes of the whole nation depended.