a room that was
walled with glazed tiles of faience and had its ceiling incrusted with
moral axioms, everywhere affixed thereto in a light lettering of tin, so
as to permit of these axioms being readily changed. Stultitia sat at a
bronze reading-desk: she wore rose-colored spectacles, and at her feet
dozed, for the while, her favorite plaything, a blind, small, very fat
white bitch called Luck.

The Queen still thought that an alliance could be arranged against Duke
Asmund as soon as public sentiment could be fomented in Philistia, but
this would take time. "Have patience, my friend!" she said, and that was
easy saying for a prosperous great lady sitting comfortably crowned and
spectacled in her own palace, under her own chimneys and skylights and
campaniles and domes and towers and battlements.

But in the mean while Manuel and Niafer had not so much as a cowshed
wherein to exercise this recommended virtue. So Manuel made inquiries,
and learned that Queen Freydis had taken up her abode on Sargyll, most
remote of the Red Islands.

"We will go to Freydis," he told Niafer.

"But, surely, not after the way that minx probably believes you treated
her?" said Niafer.

Manuel smiled the sleepy smile that was Manuel. "I know Freydis better
than you know her, my dear."

"Yes, but can you depend upon her?"

"I can depend upon myself, and that is more important."

"But, Manuel, you have another dear friend in England; and in England,
although the Lord knows I never want to lay eyes on her, we might at
least be comfortable--"

Manuel shook his head: "I am very fond of Alianora, because she
resembles me as closely as it is possible for a woman to resemble a man.
That makes two excellent reasons--one for each of us, snip,--why we had
better not go into England."

So, in their homeless condition, they resolved to set out for
Sargyll,--"to visit that other dear friend of yours," as Niafer put it,
in tones more eloquent than Manuel seemed quite to relish.

Dame Niafer, though, now began to complain that Manuel was neglecting
her for all this statecraft and fighting and speech-making and private
conference with fine ladies; and she began to talk again about what a
pity it was that she and Manuel would probably never have any children
to be company for Niafer. Niafer complained rather often nowadays, about
details which are here irrelevant: and she was used to lament with every
appearance of sincerity that, in making the cl