And if it hadn't been for Dolly's Major (he's her Godfather, and she calls him "my Major"), what we should have done I really don't know! He said, "What's the matter?" And Dolly said, "Mother's birthday's the matter." And I said, "We can't think what to devise To give her a birthday treat that won't give her neuralgia, and will take her by surprise. Look here, Major! How can you give people treats who can order what they wish for far better than you? I wonder what they do for the Queen!--her birthday must be the hardest of all." But he said, "Not a bit of it! They have a review: Cocked hats and all the rest of it; and a salute, and a _feu de joie_, and a March-Past. That's the way we keep the Queen's Birthday; and every year the same as the last." So I settled at once to have a Mother's Birthday Review; and that she should be Queen, and I should be the General in command. I thought she couldn't come to any harm by sitting in a fur cloak and a birthday wreath at the window, and bowing and waving her hand. We did not tell her what was coming, we only asked for leave to have all the seven donkeys for an hour and a half; (We always hire them from the same old man)--two for the girls, and five for me and my brothers--I told him, "for me and my Staff." We could have managed with five, if the girls would only have been Maids of Honour, and stayed indoors with the Queen. Maggie would if I'd asked her; but Dolly will go her own way, and that's into the thick of everything, to see whatever there is to be seen. She's only four years old, but she's ridiculously like the picture of an ancient ancestress of ours Who defended an old castle in Cornwall, against the French, for hours and hours. Her husband was away, so she was in command, and all her household obeyed her; She made them strip the lead off the roofs, and they did, and she boiled it down and gave it very hot indeed to the French invader.[5] Maggie would have let the French in; she doesn't like me to say so, but I know she would,--you can get anything out of Maggie by talking. [Illustration: The Spectators.]