"
The Queen paused: she coughed delicately. "But you were talking some
nonsense or other about my natural appearance not being bad looking. Now
most men prefer blondes, and, besides, you are not really listening to
me, and that is not polite."
"It is so difficult to talk collectedly," said Manuel, "with your
appalling servitors leering and capering and gnashing double sets of
teeth all over Upper Morven--"
She saw the justice of this. She went now to that doorway through which,
unless a man lifted her over the threshold, she might not pass, on
account of the tonthecs and the spaks and the horseshoes.
She cried, in a high sweet voice: "A penny, a penny, twopence, a penny
and a half, and a half-penny! Now do you go away, all of you, for the
wisdom of Helmas is too strong for us. There is no way for you to get
into, nor for me to get out of, this place of buttered willow wands,
until I have deluded and circumvented this pestiferous, squinting young
mortal. Go down into Bellegarde and spill the blood of Northmen, or
raise a hailstorm, or amuse yourselves in one way or another way.
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