“It must be astonishing, ma’am,” Lady Something replied, caressing a parure of false jewels, intended, indeed, to deceive no one, “to be a Queen of a sun-steeped country like yours.” Queen Thleeanouhee fetched a sigh. “Dateland--my dear, it’s a scorch!” she averred. “I conclude, ma’am, it’s what _we_ should call ‘conservatory’ scenery?” Lady Something murmured. “It is the land of the jessamine-flower, the little amorous jessamine-flower,” the Queen gently cooed with a sidelong smiling glance, “that twines itself sometimes to the right-hand, at others to the left, just according to its caprices!” “It sounds I fear to be unhealthy, ma’am.” “And it is the land also, of romance, my dear, where _shyness_ is a quality which is entirely unknown,” the Queen broke off, as one of her ladies, bearing a _darbouka_, advanced with an air of purposefulness towards her. The hum of voices which filled the room might well have tended to dismay a vocalist of modest powers, but the young matron known to the Court as ‘Tropical Molly,’ and whom her mistress addressed as Timzra, soon shewed herself to be equal to the occasion. “Under the blue gum-tree I am sitting waiting, Under the blue gum-tree I am waiting all alone!” Her voice reached the ears of the fresh-faced ensigns and the beardless subalterns in the Guard Room far beyond, and startled the pages in the distant dormitories, as they lay smoking on their beds. And then, the theme changing, and with an ever-increasing passion, fervour and force: “I heard a Watch-dog in the night ... Wailing, wailing ... Why is the watch-dog wailing? He is wailing for the Moon!” “That is one of the very saddest songs,” the King remarked, “that I have ever heard. ‘Why is the watchdog wailing? He is wailing for the Moon!’” And the ambitions and mortifications of kingship, for a moment weighed visibly upon him. “Something merrier, Timzra!” Queen Thleeanouhee said. And throwing back her long love-lilac sleeves, Timzra sang: “A negress with a margaret once, lolled frousting in the sun Thinking of all the little things that she had left undone ... With a hey, hey, hey, hey, hi, hey ho!” “She has the air of a cannibal!” the Archduchess murmured behind her fan to his Weariness, who had scarcely opened his lips except to yawn throughout the whole of the evening. “She has the air of a ----” he replied, laconically, turning away. Since the conversation with his mother earlier in the day, his thoughts had revolved incessantly around Laura. What had they been saying to the poor wee witch, and whereabouts was she to be found?