Queen:  That is what I thought to do.  But I hadn’t hardly started to teach her the principles of conversation and the branches of relationships and kindred of the big people of the earth, when she plucked off the coverings I had put over the cages, and set open their doors, till the fiery birds of Sabes and the canaries of the eastern world were screeching around my head, giving out every class of cry and call.

King:  So they would too.

Queen:  The royal eagles stirred up till I must quit the place with their squawking, and the enchanted swans raising up their heads and pecking at the beadwork on my gown.

King:  Ah, she has a wish for the birds of the air, that are by nature light and airy the same as herself.

Queen: It is time for her to turn her mind to good sense.  What’s that? (Whipping cloth from tray.) Is it that you are eating again, and it is but one half-hour since your breakfast?

King:  Ah, that wasn’t a breakfast you’d call a breakfast.

Queen:  Very healthy food, oaten meal flummery with whey, and a griddle-cake; dandelion tea and sorrel from the field.

King:  My old fathers ate their enough of wild herbs and the like in the early time of the world.  I’m thinking that it is in my nature to require a good share of nourishment as if to make up for the hardships they went through.

Queen:  What now have you within that pastry wall?

King:  It is but a little leveret pie.

Queen:  (Poking with fork.) Leveret!  What’s this in it?  The thickness of a blanket of beef; calves’ sweetbreads; cocks’ combs; balls mixed with livers and with spice.  You to so much as taste of it, you’ll be crippled and crappled with the gout, and roaring out in your pain.

King:  I tell you my generations have enough done of fasting and for making little of the juicy meats of the world.

Queen:  And the waste of it!  Goose eggs and jellies....  That much would furnish out a dinner for the whole of the King of Alban’s Court. King:  Ah, I wouldn’t wish to be using anything at all, only for to gather strength for to steer the business of the whole of the kingdom!

Queen:  Have you enough ate now, my dear?  Are you satisfied?

King: I am not.  I would wish for a little taste of that saffron cake having in it raisins of the sun.

Queen:  Saffron!  Are you raving?  You to have within you any of the four-and-twenty sicknesses of the race, it would throw it out in red blisters on your skin.

King:  Let me just taste one little slab of that venison ham.

Queen:  (Poking with a fork.) It would take seven chewings!  Sudden death it would be!  Leave it alone now and rise up.  To keep in health every man should quit the table before he is satisfied —­there are some would walk to the door and back with every bite.