Edgar Jepson

“ For an hour the Baroness Pulvermacher growled hoarsely of the glories of the house of Meiningen-Schwerin, and of the grovelling respect due to her distinguished pupil from the rest of the world. For another hour she growled with undiminished hoarseness of etiquette. For an hour she growled of the arts of reading and writing, in which branches of polite learning Princess Wilhelmina was about as far advanced as a bricklayer's daughter at the age of seven. The Lady Noggs, in spite of the reproaches of the baroness, yawned and yawned. She was bored to extinction. ”

“ The outcry rose to the skies: the prince and princess, the baroness, and the ladies-in-waiting were all expressing their loud horror and dismay together to an accompaniment of the joyous yelping of the poodles, who foolishly supposed it a new kind of game. The Princess Wilhelmina protested that they had but been gathering water-lilies and she had fallen in; the Lady Noggs cried, with an anguished plaintiveness, "How could I keep her out of the pond? She's such a silly little girl." ”

“ Half-way down she bethought herself to pinch her arm viciously; and on the instant the Lady Noggs retorted with a tug which loosened half the not innumerable hairs in her head.
"Ow! ow! ow!" squealed Wilhelmina. "The Englanderin has bulled mine 'air! Owl owl ow!"
The princess, the prince, two ladies-in-waiting, an equerry, and four poodles burst pell-mell from the dining-room, and began to console their squealing darling. When the squeals hushed, they turned on the Lady Noggs in furious upbraiding.
"It's all right," the Lady Noggs protested. "She pinched me, and I pulled her hair. ”