that lady with a new infant. "She was buried alive and kem
to!" said Polly with a melancholy air. Fortunately, the representation
of a resuscitated person required such extraordinary acting, and was,
through some uncertainty of conception, so closely allied in facial
expression to the Proud Lady, that Mrs. Smith was resuscitated only for
a day.

The origin of the title of the Queen of the Pirate Isle may be briefly
stated as follows:--

An hour after luncheon, one day, Polly, Hickory Hunt, her cousin, and
Wan Lee, a Chinese page, were crossing the nursery floor in a Chinese
junk. The sea was calm and the sky cloudless. Any change in the weather
was as unexpected as it is in books. Suddenly a West Indian Hurricane,
purely local in character and unfelt anywhere else, struck Master
Hickory and threw him overboard, whence, wildly swimming for his life
and carrying Polly on his back, he eventually reached a Desert Island in
the closet. Here the rescued party put up a tent made of a table-cloth
providentially snatched from the raging billows, and, from two o'clock
until four, passed six weeks on the island, supported only by a piece
of candle, a box of matches, and two peppermint lozenges. It was at this
time that it became necessary to account for Polly's existence among
them, and this was only effected by an alarming sacrifice of their
morality; Hickory and Wan Lee instantly became PIRATES, and at once
elected Polly as their Queen. The royal duties, which seemed to be
purely maternal, consisted in putting the Pirates to bed after a day of
rapine and bloodshed, and in feeding them with licorice water through a
quill in a small bottle. Limited as her functions were, Polly performed
them with inimitable gravity and unquestioned sincerity. Even when her
companions sometimes hesitated from actual hunger or fatigue and forgot
their guilty part, she never faltered. It was her real existence; her
other life of being washed, dressed, and put to bed at certain hours by
her mother was the ILLUSION.

Doubt and skepticism came at last,--and came from Wan Lee! Wan Lee of
all creatures! Wan Lee, whose silent, stolid, mechanical performance of
a pirate's duties--a perfect imitation like all his household work--had
been their one delight and fascination!

It was just after the exciting capture of a merchantman, with the
indiscriminate slaughter of all on board,--a spectacle on which the
round blue eyes of the plump Polly had gazed with