Then the Snoodle, having finished his embrace, released his long-lost
relative and sat down on his long hinder-parts, looking about at the
spectators with an air that said, "There! I'm satisfied! I didn't do
any harm, did I?"
And at that the populace went wild. You never saw such a change come
over a nation of people in your life. They showered attentions upon
Sara until she was so delighted that she scarcely knew how to deport
herself. They proclaimed her a heroine; they brought a sort of sedan
chair, borne, not by the common cabbage butterflies who usually
carried them, but by a Chrysophanus hypophlaeas and a Lavatera
assurgentiflora. And when they had put her into it they carried her at
the head of a procession to the royal gardens behind the palace, where
no mortal had ever entered; and there they crowned her with flowers
which have no name in our language, but which the butterflies call
tinnulalia. And they fed her--not with butter this time--but with
honey-dew. They fanned her with their enormous wings (as big as
peacocks') and hovered over her, and murmured compliments in her ears,
until it was hard for her to believe that they were the same lovely
but supercilious race who had received her so coolly in the morning.
And when, suddenly, the temple-gong sounded, and the Equine Gahoppigas,
saddled and bridled, and champing his bit, appeared at the entrance to
the royal gardens, they all took out their cobweb handkerchiefs and
wept bitterly.
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