Ann's voice sounded disappointed as well as surprised, and in her
excitement she spoke so loud that Captain Jinks himself turned his
threatening eye on her and called out: "Silence!" But Ann paid no
attention to him, nor did the other children; the eyes of all three
were fixed upon a little figure who rode all alone at the very end of
the procession. They knew she must be the Queen by the respectful way
in which Captain Jinks and the sergeant saluted, but she was very
different from what they had imagined a Queen to be. The wooden horse
which she rode was not handsome, indeed one of his legs was missing,
but he pranced and curvetted so proudly upon the remaining three that
it seemed as if he knew he carried a Queen upon his back. The royal
lady kept her seat with perfect ease, and when she came opposite the
children, she checked her steed, halted, and gazed down upon them.

"Have you forgotten me?" she said. Then she smiled and they knew her
at once. It was the corn-cob doll! Though she had grown so much larger
and seemed so much grander, yet she looked just the same as when they
had taken her out of Aunt Jane's sandal-wood box from which, the
children now remembered, certain tin soldiers and a three-legged
wooden horse had also come! The Queen still wore her flowing
greeny-yellow gown, her hair was braided in two long braids that hung
over her shoulders, and she carried her quaint little head high, in
truly royal fashion.

Now she dismounted gracefully from her horse and came toward the
children, holding out her hand. They dared not look her in the face.
They were all three ashamed to speak to her, and especially Rudolf who
remembered only too clearly all the unkind things he had said about
the corn-cob doll, and how very, very near he had come to roasting her