passed
that way. Working herself through the screen of leaves, she emerged
into a fairly cleared path that her accustomed feet followed to its
logical climax--a deep depression scooped out under the sharp,
down-pointed iron prongs, worn smooth by the frequent pressure of
small bodies. The fence had lost its shiny blackness by now and the
grass grew rank and untended around the mouth of the gap. Wriggling
through, Caroline straightened herself and strolled unconcerned
toward the castle, not so near her now. Soon she reached a newly
rolled tennis court; farther on two saddled horses pawed beside a
little summer-house, impatient for the start; an iridescent fountain
tossed two gleaming balls high into the air. Caroline moved like one
in a dream; her fancy, grown so overwhelmingly real, dazzled her,
fairly. But it was like the court of the Sleeping Beauty--no one
came or called.

At length, wandering on, she came upon a gardener in a neat gray
livery, clipping with a large, distorted pair of scissors the velvet
edge of a flower-bed. He resembled so undeniably the gardeners in
that ageless chronicle of Alice that Caroline smiled approvingly
upon him.

"You are one of my gardeners, I suppose," she said regally.

"Yes, Miss," he replied, respectfully, touching his banded cap, "I
am that."

"You garden very well," said Marie Antoinette, dizzy with delight at
his manner.

"Yes, Miss; thank you, Miss, I'm sure," and the cap came off.

She walked on superbly. At last it had happened, and she, Caroline
in the flesh, had fought her way through the prickly hedge of
every-day appearance and won into the garden of romance, where
dreams were true and anything might happen.

At that moment there came to meet her from behind a great beech tree
a slender little lady. She had gray hair puffed daintily and
fancifully about her small, pale face, and knots of pale blue
ribbon, woven in and out of her lacy, trailing gown, repeated the
color of her mild, round eyes. Half consciously Caroline muttered:
"Here is one of my ladies-in-waiting," when the little lady rushed
at her, smiling delightedly.

"Are you a queen, then?" she cried in a high, sweet voice. "How very
pleasant. Dear me, how _very_ pleasant!"

Caroline smiled with equal delight. Very few persons of this little
lady's age had such quick sense; mostly they had to be taught the
game.

"Yes," she answered, "I am. I am Queen Marie Antoinette."

The little lady fell back