The middle of the room was left clear, and different people came and did amusing things. There were conjurers and jugglers and snake-charmers, which last Anthea did not like at all.
When it got dark torches were lighted. Cedar splinters dipped in oil blazed in copper dishes set high on poles.
Then there was a dancer, who hardly danced at all, only just struck attitudes. She had hardly any clothes, and was not at all pretty. The children were rather bored by her, but everyone else was delighted, including the King.
“By the beard of Nimrod!” he cried, “ask what you like girl, and you shall have it!”
“I want nothing,” said the dancer; “the honour of having pleased the King may-he-live-for-ever is reward enough for me.”
And the King was so pleased with this modest and sensible reply that he gave her the gold collar off his own neck.
“I say!” said Cyril, awed by the magnificence of the gift.
“It’s all right,” whispered the Queen, “it’s not his best collar by any means. We always keep a stock of cheap jewellery for these occasions. And now—you promised to sing us something. Would you like my minstrels to accompany you?”
“No, thank you,” said Anthea quickly. The minstrels had been playing off and on all the time, and their music reminded Anthea of the band she and the others had once had on the fifth of November—with penny horns, a tin whistle, a tea-tray, the tongs, a policeman’s rattle, and a toy drum. They had enjoyed this band very much at the time. But it was quite different when someone else was making the same kind of music. Anthea understood now that Father had not been really heartless and unreasonable when he had told them to stop that infuriating din.
“Too soft—I vote for ‘Who will o’er the downs’. Now then—one, two, three.
“Oh, who will o’er the downs so free, Oh, who will with me ride, Oh, who will up and follow me, To win a blooming bride?
Her father he has locked the door, Her mother keeps the key; But neither bolt nor bar shall keep My own true love from me.”
Jane, the alto, was missing, and Robert, unlike the mother of the lady in the song, never could “keep the key”, but the song, even so, was sufficiently unlike anything any of them had ever heard to rouse the Babylonian Court to the wildest enthusiasm.