“That’s all right,” consented Keith, “except the eating part.  How can we get our share of the picnic?”

“We’ll save it for you,” answered Virginia, “and you can eat it afterward.”

“Save enough for Jonesy, too,” said Keith.  “He shall be my page and help me rescue her.  I’ll go and ask him now.”

The month had made a great change in Jonesy.  With plenty to eat, his thin little snub-nosed face grew plump and bright.  There was a good-humoured twinkle in his sharp eyes, and being quick as a monkey at imitating the movements of those around him, Mrs. MacIntyre found nothing to criticise in his manners when Malcolm and Keith brought him into the house.  Their pride in him was something amusing, and seeing that, after all, he was an inoffensive little fellow, she made no more objections to their playing with him.

By the time Keith was back again with Jonesy, the other guests had arrived, and the Little Colonel had been lowered into a deep feed-bin, in lieu of a dungeon.  The banquet began in great state, but in a few moments was interrupted by a fearful shrieking from the depths of the bin.  The fair ladye protested that she would not stay in her dungeon.

“There’s nasty big spidahs down heah!” she called.  “Ow!  One is crawlin’ on my neck now, and my face is all tangled up in cobwebs!  Get me out!  Get me out!  Quick, Gingah!”

The king sprang up to go to her rescue, but was promptly motioned to his seat again by a warning shake of the other crowned head.

“Why, of course!  There’s always spiders in dungeons,” called the wicked queen, coolly helping herself to another piece of chicken.  “Besides, you should say ‘your Majesty’ when you are talking to me.”

“But there’s a mouse in heah, too,” she called back, in distress.  “Oo!  Oo!  It ran ovah my feet.  If you don’t make them take me out of heah, Gingah Dudley, I’ll do something awful to you!  Murdah!  Murdah!” she yelled, pounding on the sides of the bin with both her fists, and stamping her little foot in a furious rage.

[Illustration:  “THE LITTLE COLONEL HAD BEEN LOWERED INTO A DEEP FEED-BIN.”]

Seeing that Lloyd was really terrified, and fearing that her screams would bring some one from the house, the royal couple and their guests sprang to the rescue, nearly upsetting the banquet as they did so.  The game would have been broken up then, when she was lifted out from the feed-bin, red and angry, if it had not been for the king’s great tact.  He brushed the cobwebs from her face and hair, and even got down on his royal knees to ask her pardon.

His polite coaxing finally had its effect on the little lady, and he persuaded her to climb a ladder into a loft just above them.  Here on a pile of clean hay, beside an open window that looked across a peaceful meadow, her anger cooled.  Towers were far more comfortable than dungeons, in her opinion, and when Malcolm came up the ladder with a plateful of the choicest morsels of the feast, she began to enjoy her part of the play.  Jonesy was sent to inform his knight of the change from dungeon to tower, and the banquet went merrily on.