238 AN AGREEABLE PROSPECT. 



turn us out another royal mistress and cam sposa: mine, my 

 lord, or yours, as may be." 



The companion to whom this speech was addressed, shrugged 

 his shoulders, looked cautiously around, and then returned, in 

 a tone almost inaudible " I've been thinking whether we 

 might not dispense with any such personage at all. 7 ' " What !" 

 exclaimed the other, starting, his large dull eyes almost spark- 

 ling with astonishment at the unheard-of notion ; " Do without 

 our Queen! our light our life our load-star! Surely, my 

 lord, thou. hast been quaffing too freely of the funereal nectar 

 and art beside thyself. Our very existence depends upon 

 the smiles of our royal mistress." The disloyal and bold 

 suggestor of a new idea answered only by a low sound, 

 resembling in meaning a contemptuous laugh ; and the audible 

 sneer was echoed, though in a shriller key, by one of the aged 

 females who had been listening to the discourse, in which she 

 now ventured to take a part. "In good sooth, master mine," 

 said she, " thou hast said right ; thy own existence, and that 

 of all thy brethren, did verily depend on the pleasure of her 

 majesty deceased; and as her majesty-in-making will be 

 finished exactly after the same pattern, why on her pleasure 

 they will depend also ; the which gracious pleasure, or (what 

 amounts to the same) gracious permission will be, that your 

 throats are cut (every one of you) before the summer is over." 

 " How ! how ! what say you, mistress ?" exclaimed both the 

 speakers, and several other of their lounging lordships, who 



