a little like custard and a little like ice-cream and a little
like a sort of candy Sara had forgotten the name of. And it had a
fragrance something like that of isthagaria.

The Monarch went to sleep as soon as he saw that Sara had begun to eat;
but just before she finished he was awakened by a court official who
came in to announce, with a bored expression, that two ladies of high
degree, members of families very prominent in the realm, desired an
audience with His Majesty.

The Monarch sighed and rubbed his eyes with his feelers.

"Show them in," he said.

The two ladies came zigzagging in, talking and arguing excitedly; they
were the first really animated persons Sara had seen in all this warm,
shimmering place.

"The Princess Interrogation: the Countess Leaf-Wing," announced the
courtier.

Then the two ladies, who had been talking to each other, both began
talking at once to the king. In spite of their aristocratic, high-bred
air, their long necks and waists and slender wrists and ankles, their
high heels and gorgeous clothes, they were as angry as cooks.

"She was laying eggs on my food-plant!" cried the Princess.

"I wasn't!" shrilled the Countess. "What do I want with her old
nettle? Don't I know Croton capita turn when I see it? I was just
resting, and she came and pushed me off--"

"She had already come and stuck her long tongue into a lily I had just
occupied," continued the Princess. "And I saw the eggs after she
left--"

"They were your own old flat eggs," said the Countess contemptuously.
"You haven't mind enough to remember where you put them!"

"Oh, roses!" sighed the Monarch, "I suppose I'll never have any
peace. Always on the verge of civil war! Yesterday it was the
clover-caterpillars complaining that the zebras were eating their
food--"

Sara was just thinking how shockingly unbecoming such conduct was, and
how they were all behaving more like children than like the nice,
unintelligent lower animals they ought to be, when another messenger
came flying in in a state of actual excitement.

"Your Majesty!" he cried. "There's a strange animal attacking the
caterpillars!"

Sara's heart sank. The Snoodle--she knew it must be the Snoodle! And
she felt responsible for him!

She jumped up from her silver table-cloth and ran out of the palace
door, with the whole court zigzagging excitedly after her. It was a
noiseless chase, for the butterflies (except when they quarrel) are
very quiet;