we must run beautifully.

MOOMOOMON: I think that I should give the word when we rattle our
scabbards and all drum with our heels; but I waive the point. But I do
not think that the Queen can run far. She has never left the palace. How
could she run over the moor as far as Aether Mountain. She will faint at
the end of the street and we shall come up with her and bow and offer
her our assistance.

MELIFLOR: Good, good. It would be cold and rocky on Aether Mountain.

MOOMOOMON: The Queen could never go there over the moor.

HUZ: No, she is too dainty.

XIMENUNG: They say she could.

MELIFLOR: They; what do they know? Common workers. What should they
know of queens?

XIMENUNG: They have the old prophesies that came over the fields from
the dawn.

MELIFLOR: Yet they cannot understand the Queen.

XIMENUNG: They say her mother went there.

MELIFLOR: That was long ago. Women are quite different now.

XIMENUNG: Well, give the word.

MELIFLOR: Nay. You shall give the word, Moomoomon. When you raise your
hand we will all drum with our heels together and rattle our scabbards
together, and frighten the Queen.

MOOMOOMON: I honour your courtesy, lord of the deep meadows.

MELIFLOR: We are ready then. When you raise your hand----

[_A gust of laughter is heard off, from a far part of the palace._

MOOMOOMON: Hark! Hark!

MELIFLOR: It is the Queen! She laughed.

HUZ: Could she have guessed...?

MOOMOOMON: I trust not.

MELIFLOR: She--she--cannot have been thinking of _us_.

MOOMOOMON: She--she--seldom laughs.

HUZ: What can it be?

MOOMOOMON: Perhaps it was nothing and yet ...

MELIFLOR: Yet it makes me uneasy.

MOOMOOMON: It is not that I fear, but, when a queen laughs--it makes a
feeling in the palace--as though all were not well.

HUZ: It makes one have forebodings. One cannot help it.

MELIFLOR: Perhaps; perhaps later we could return to our gallant scheme;
for the present I think I'll hide a while.

MOOMOOMON: Yes, let us hide.

MELIFLOR: So that if there be anything wrong in the palace it will not
find us.

[_Exeunt_ MOOMOOMON _and_ MELIFLOR.

HUZ: Let us hide.

[_Exeunt all but_ ZOON _and_ OOMUZ.

[ZOON _has sat always with bent head at table. He sits so, still._

ZOON (_bitterly_): They would follow the Queen.

OOMUZ: Mighty Highness----

ZOON (_still to himself_): They will come back boasting that they dared
follow the Queen.

OOMUZ: Mighty Highness.

ZOON: Yes, good Oomuz.