The Monarch went to sleep as soon as he saw that Sara had begun to eat; but just before she finished he was awakened by a court official who came in to announce, with a bored expression, that two ladies of high degree, members of families very prominent in the realm, desired an audience with His Majesty.

The Monarch sighed and rubbed his eyes with his feelers.

“Show them in,” he said.

The two ladies came zigzagging in, talking and arguing excitedly; they were the first really animated persons Sara had seen in all this warm, shimmering place.

“The Princess Interrogation:  the Countess Leaf-Wing,” announced the courtier.

Then the two ladies, who had been talking to each other, both began talking at once to the king.  In spite of their aristocratic, high-bred air, their long necks and waists and slender wrists and ankles, their high heels and gorgeous clothes, they were as angry as cooks.

“She was laying eggs on my food-plant!” cried the Princess.

“I wasn’t!” shrilled the Countess.  “What do I want with her old nettle?  Don’t I know Croton capita turn when I see it?  I was just resting, and she came and pushed me off—­”

“She had already come and stuck her long tongue into a lily I had just occupied,” continued the Princess.  “And I saw the eggs after she left—­”

“They were your own old flat eggs,” said the Countess contemptuously.  “You haven’t mind enough to remember where you put them!”

“Oh, roses!” sighed the Monarch, “I suppose I’ll never have any peace.  Always on the verge of civil war!  Yesterday it was the clover-caterpillars complaining that the zebras were eating their food—­”

Sara was just thinking how shockingly unbecoming such conduct was, and how they were all behaving more like children than like the nice, unintelligent lower animals they ought to be, when another messenger came flying in in a state of actual excitement.

“Your Majesty!” he cried.  “There’s a strange animal attacking the caterpillars!”

Sara’s heart sank.  The Snoodle—­she knew it must be the Snoodle!  And she felt responsible for him!

She jumped up from her silver table-cloth and ran out of the palace door, with the whole court zigzagging excitedly after her.  It was a noiseless chase, for the butterflies (except when they quarrel) are very quiet; but there was much excitement nevertheless.  Sara ran a little way from the palace before she came to the scene of the disturbance—­and such a scene as it was!  Caterpillars everywhere, bristling, smooth, green, pink, eye-marked and eyeless; caterpillars standing on their tails, or crouching in every conceivable attitude of defense; and in their midst the little Snoodle, frisking and fawning and endeavoring to come to grips with the horny and horrified worms.  There was one old Hickory Horn-Devil in particular, who had come out in front of the others like Goliath