There is a certain poster, all stars and poppies and deep grass; and over these hangs a new moon which must surely have been cut by fairy scissors, for it looks as much like a cake or a cowslip as it looks like a moon. But withal it sheds a light so eery and strangely silver that the poster seems, in spite of the poppies, to have been painted in Spring-wind.
"Never," said some chance visitors vehemently, "have I seen such a moon as that!"
"But ah, sir, and ah, madame," was the answer--it is not recorded whether the poster spoke or whether some one spoke for it--"wouldn't you like to?"
Now, therefore, concerning the sweet of those hours in the king's palace the Vehement may be tempted to exclaim that in life things never happen like that. Ah--do they not so? You have only to go back to the days when young love and young life were yours to recall distinctly that the most impossible things were every-day occurrences. What about the time that you went down one street instead of up another and that changed the entire course of your days and brought you two together? What about the song, the June, the letter that touched the world to gold before your eyes and caught you up in a place of clouds? Remembering that magic, it is quite impossible to assert that any charming thing whatever would not have happened. Is there not some wonderland in every life? And is not the ancient citadel of Love-upon-the-Heights that common wonderland? One must believe in all the happiness that one can.
But if the Most Vehement--who are as thick as butterflies--still remain unconvinced and persist that they never heard of things fallen out thus, there is left this triumph: "Ah, sir, or ah, madame, wouldn't you like to?"
* * * * * A fugitive wind rollicking in from sea next morning swept through the palace and went on around the world; and thereafter it had an hundred odourous ways of attracting attention, which were merely its own tale of what pleasant things it had seen and heard on high.
For example, that breakfast. A cloth had been laid at one end of the long stone table whereat, since the days of Abibaal, brother to Hiram, friend to David, kings had breakfasted and banqueted, and this cloth had now been set with the ancient plate of the palace--dishes that looked like helmets and urns and discs. Here Olivia and Antoinette, in charming print frocks, made a kind of tea in a kind of biblical samovar and served it in vessels that resembled individual trophies of the course. And here St. George and Amory praised the admirable English muffins which some one had taught the dubious cook to make; and Mr. Augustus Frothingham tip-fingered his way about his plate among alien fruits and queer-shaped cakes. "Are they cookies or are they manna?" Amory wondered, "for they remind me of coriander seeds." And here Mrs. Hastings, who always awoke a thought impatient and became ultra-complacent with no interval of real sanity, wistfully asked for a soft-boiled egg and added plaintively: "Though I dare say the very hens in Yaque lay something besides eggs--pineapples, very likely."