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Updated: May 27, 2025
When all the invitations had been sent out, the Queen went down to the kitchen to superintend the cooking of the master-dainty of the feast, a huge strawberry-tart. The morning on which the grand ceremony was to take place arrived.
She stood up in her place, her arms akimbo, glowering at her plate, on which an attendant had just deposited a small chocolate eclair. "Where's my piece of strawberry-tart?" she repeated. The Queen rose. "I am very sorry, Madam Malvolia," said she in her sweetest voice, "but the strawberry-tart has given out."
Almost at the same moment, the chief cook, looking rather pale and worried, bustled through the throng and whispered in her ear, "Your Majesty, the strawberry-tart has given out!" The Queen turned pale. At length she managed to ask in a weak voice, "Have you plenty of other pastries?" "Yes, Your Majesty," replied the cook. "Then let them be served at once."
Nor was the menu mixed, which happens so frequently to-day that you are apt to have soup, ice, cake, roast, soup, and a roast again. No, from soup to ice the banquet was a huge success; but, alas, disaster came with the strawberry-tart.
As the Queen was chatting with the Lord Chancellor of the Enchanted Islands, she happened to notice for like a good hostess she had been keeping an eye to the comfort of her guests that nobody on the right-hand side of the hall had been served with strawberry-tart.
"Oh yes, strawberry-tart baked by the Queen's own hands for her own dear friends," said Malvolia sneeringly; "but for me, a fairy of age and distinction, an ordinary, low baker's eclair. The Kingdom of the Black Mountains has been deliberately insulted in my person!" "No, no, no, no!" cried the King and the Queen. "We assure you, madam, that it was a simple mischance."
The cook withdrew, and the Queen, though somewhat shaken, took up the conversation again. Ten minutes passed, and she was beginning to forget her start, when a voice, rising clear and rasping over the hubbub of the hall, said suddenly, "Where's my piece of strawberry-tart?" Everybody turned toward the speaker, an elderly fairy from the Kingdom of the Black Mountains, named Malvolia.
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