The little tin captain stepped eagerly forward.  “Shall I give orders to prepare for the execution, your Majesty?” he began, in a voice full of pleased excitement.  “These suspicious persons are already under arrest.  They would furnish very excellent targets for the artillery practise?  If it should please your Majesty to offer a prize for the best shot?  Or, if your Majesty is in a hurry, now, a nice dip in boiling oil would finish them off very neatly!”

“Be quiet, Jinks,” said the Queen frowning.  “You talk so much I can’t think.  If it wasn’t for those tiresome revolutions in my capital city, I believe I’d banish you.  Let me see, how many of them have you suppressed for me?”

“Exactly twelve, your Majesty,” answered Jinks with a low bow, “and I beg to announce that we are at this moment on the brink of the thirteenth—­baker’s dozen, your Majesty.”

“Oh, it’s the baker this time, is it?” asked the Queen with a sigh.  “What’s the matter with him, Jinks?”

“Same old trouble, your Majesty.  Your court, those doll ladies in particular, have become so haughty—­”

“Naughty, you mean, Jinks,” corrected the Queen.

“So haughty and naughty, your Majesty, that they’ve absolutely refused to eat their crusts.  Did anybody, I ask your Majesty, ever hear the likes of that?”

There was a moment’s silence.  The Queen shook her head.  The children tried to appear at their ease, but they were not.  Ann looked particularly uncomfortable.  She was not fond of her crusts.

“Well, go on, Jinks, what else?” said the Queen.

“Well, your Majesty, this keeps the baker busy day and night baking ’em bread, not to speak of the cakes and pies, and he says he feels he hadn’t orter stand it any longer.  He’s going to strike.  As for the populace, your Majesty, they only get the stale loaves or none at all, and they’re wild, your Majesty, very wild indeed.”

“I suppose they are, Jinks,” sighed the Queen.

“And the worst of it is, your Majesty, we’re very short of soldiers.  The Commander-in-Chief”—­both Jinks and the sergeant drew themselves up and saluted at the name—­“has taken a whole company to the seaboard for to repel the cat pirates, and very fierce them pirates are, I’ve heard tell.  We may have to send him reinforcements at any time.”

“The Commander-in-Chief, Jinks,” said the Queen haughtily, “is a great general.  He will manage the pirates and the baker, too, if you can’t do it.  And if the worst should come to the worst before he gets back, why I’ll just abdicate, that’s all, and the baker can be king and much good may it do him.”  She turned to the children and smiled at them.  “Now,” she said, “you shall come with me and I will show you where I used to live before I was a Queen.”

The corn-cob doll waved her hand, gave an order, and immediately the carriage in which sat Marie-Louise and Angelina-Elfrida was turned and driven back to where the children stood.