expression to the Proud Lady, that Mrs. Smith was resuscitated only
for a day.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
The origin of the title of the Queen of the Pirate Isle, may be
briefly stated as follows:--
An hour after luncheon, one day, Polly, Hickory Hunt, her cousin,
and Wan Lee, a Chinese page, were crossing the nursery floor in a
Chinese junk. The sea was calm and the sky cloudless. Any change in
the weather was as unexpected as it is in books. Suddenly a West
Indian Hurricane, purely local in character and unfelt anywhere
else, struck Master Hickory and threw him overboard, whence, wildly
swimming for his life and carrying Polly on his back, he eventually
reached a Desert Island in the closet. Here the rescued party put up
a tent made of a table cloth providentially snatched from the raging
billows, and from two o'clock until four, passed six weeks on the
island supported only by a piece of candle, a box of matches, and
two peppermint lozenges. It was at this time that it became
necessary to account for Polly's existence among them, and this was
only effected by an alarming sacrifice of their morality; Hickory
and Wan Lee instantly became _Pirates_, and at once elected Polly as
their Queen. The royal duties, which seemed to be purely maternal,
consisted in putting the Pirates to bed after a day of rapine and
bloodshed, and in feeding them with liquorice water through a quill
in a small bottle. Limited as her functions were, Polly performed
them with inimitable gravity and unquestioned sincerity. Even when
her companions sometimes hesitated from actual hunger or fatigue and
forgot their guilty part, she never faltered. It was her _real_
existence--her other life of being washed, dressed, and put to bed
at certain hours by her mother was the _illusion_.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
Doubt and scepticism came at last,--and came from Wan Lee! Wan Lee
of all creatures! Wan Lee, whose silent, stolid, mechanical
performance of a Pirate's duties--a perfect imitation like all his
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