"Oh, how annoying!" the Queen said. "Just as it was beginning to be interesting! Now I shall have to go in to dinner. But I’ll bring you the meat and the flannel to-morrow, and then you’ll tell me, won’t you?" The bat said, "We’ll see about it," and so the Queen arose from her seat, and, stooping to avoid the roses that caught at her, went out towards the palace and up the marble steps into it. The palace was an enormous hall, all of marble, and very, very cold. The dining-room itself was a vast hall, as long as an ordinary street, with a table as long and as broad as the roadway thereof, so that the poor little Queen felt rather lonely, sitting at one end of it, with the enormous vessels all of gold, and the great gold candlesticks, and the long line of deaf and dumb domestics that stood and looked on, or presented their dishes kneeling. Generally the Regent’s wife, or, if he hadn’t one, his sister or mother, acted as the Queen’s governess, and stood behind her chair. But that evening there was no one at all. "I suppose they’ve cut her head off," the Queen said resignedly. "I wonder what the next one will be like. But I shan’t be bothered with her long, if the bat tells me how to fly. I shall just go right off somewhere, and see mountains, and valleys, and rivers, and seas; and hundreds and hundreds of wonderful things out of books. Oh, it will be lovely! And as to the Regents, they can just cut each other’s heads off as much as they like." And so, having dined, she went to bed, and lay a long time awake thinking how delightful it would be to fly. The next morning, at breakfast, she found a note to say that the Lord Blackjowl desired an early audience with her on the subject of the Regency. "I suppose I _must_ go," the Queen said. "I do hope he won’t be much wounded, it’s so nasty to look at, and I _did_ want to go into the garden to see the bat." However, she went down into the audience chamber at once, to get it over. The guard drew back the curtain in the doorway and she went in. A great man with a black beard was awaiting her, and at her entrance sank down on one knee. "Oh, get up, please," she said. "I don’t like talking to men when they kneel, it looks so stupid. What is it you want? I suppose it’s about the Regency." The Lord Blackjowl arose. His eyes were little and sharp; they seemed to look right through the Queen. "Your Majesty is correct, as so peerless a lady must be," he said "The nobles and people were groaning under the yoke of the late traitor and tyrant who called himself Regent, and so we took the liberty, the great liberty, of——" "Oh yes, I know what you want," the Queen interrupted him. "You want to be pardoned for the unconstitutionality of it. So I suppose I shall have to pardon you. If you give me the paper I’ll sign it." The Lord Blackjowl handed her one of many papers that he held in his hand. "If your Majesty will be graciously pleased to sign it here."