240 A SENSATION. 



The lordlings looked at one another in blank astonishment. 

 With the exception of one frightful feature, (that of their own 

 simultaneous massacre,) with which they were, of course, not 

 personally acquainted, they could not deny the accuracy of the 

 old crone's royal portrait ; yet, owing to the new light in which 

 she had placed it, it appeared altogether in new and alarming 

 colours. They not only looked at each other, but they looked 

 at the building in progress: murmurs arose; "We'll have 

 no such tyrant, no such cruel mistress to rule over us ! We'll 

 attack the royal nurseries, and kill all the royal nurslings in 

 their cradles!^ And then they looked as fierce as any 

 Bobadil or Drawcansir. They even put their hands to their 

 sides as if to feel for weapons, forgetting at the moment 

 that the males of Apia were never privileged to carry arms 

 about them. They forgot, too, that the royal buildings 

 were protected both by workwomen and guardswomen, and 

 that the bulk of the people, indeed, the entire population, 

 save only the superannuated, were for the queen-in-feeding, 

 being all devotedly attached to royalty after the old model. 

 All this the lords had forgotten ; but it was only for a moment, 

 the next they remembered it : out went their little sparks of 

 courage, and they looked less vacant, but more blank than 

 ever. They must submit quietly to let the new queen be made 

 after the old pattern, and allow themselves, par consequence, to 

 be done to death as their fathers had ever been before them. 

 But the cunning old female was made of other stutf. " For 



