The Queen’s Dog Rex CONCLUSION

As you perhaps remember from the first part of our story, the Queen’s dog has run away. Little Rex was found by a farm girl, who adopted him and named him Ralph. After the adoption an entire month went by, and then two months, and then three. After three months had passed Rex had very nearly forgotten that he was the Queens’ dog, and had more or less become the dog of the farm girl who could do division. She was three months older, and so had learned division in the school for the farm girls and boys.

All during this time the family taking care of Rex expected to discover whom he belonged to, and were certain that he did not belong to them but to some unknown person. They even went so far as to put an ad in the Lost and Found Dogs section of the newspaper, but it was the farmer’s newspaper, something Royal families would never read, so nobody in the town found out about where Rex had disappeared to.

Meanwhile, back at the Palace the Queen had been very upset for many days, and even after a month went by, she was still not quite herself. It was observed that she was often sad, and even if someone were to tell a joke and get her to laugh, even so, after that, she would seem even more upset. But finally after three months, she began to get over the disappearance of her little dog, but still nobody would even dare to suggest getting a new puppy. Such a suggestion was sure to make the Queen absolutely furious, so nobody said anything about it.

Back at the farmhouse with the family and the girl who could now do long division, Rex gradually became a member of his new family. They did not call him Rex, because they had no way of knowing what his name was, but instead they called him Ralph. They asked him what his name was and he said, “Ralph, Ralph, RALPH, Ralph, so they shortened it to just Ralph.

Because of his new name, Rex almost forgot who he was, and tried his best to come when he heard the name Ralph called, especially if it was half past supper time.

One day, Sarah and Ralph were weeding the garden in front of their cottage when a government stage with important documents for the King and the Queen went by. That meant it was Thursday, and this event was no different than any other , except that when the carriage was a great distance away it slowed down, and then it stopped. This had never happened before, and Sarah felt a strange foreboding.

Sarah had noticed in the past that Ralph would sometimes act oddly whenever it was Thursday and the court coach happened to go by and now, as she stood there in the garden, the carriage turned around and came back toward the town. To Sarah’s amazement it stopped right in front of her garden, and the driver came down from his seat and addressed her saying. “Tell me young lady if there might be a place where a famished driver might find something to eat.”

“There is none such,” she replied, and continued weeding the garden. Little Rex ran up to the man and sniffed his boot, then he ran away, but turned and came back up to him. The man knelt down and scratched Ralph’s head like strangers so often do and he also began to compliment little Ralph, not neglecting to examine his back paw, which seemed to be an odd color. Then he arose, and with nary a thought of something to eat, turned his carriage around and headed for the palace.

The queen, when she heard a new report of the sighting of Rex, entered it into a ledger she kept concerning Rex, and then gave the courier a silver coin from a bag she kept under her throne expressly for that purpose, although after such a long time it has simply become a polite way for beggars to ask for alms, a thing the good queen was said to encourage. But there was something about this new sighting that aroused her interest.

Late in the summer, the farmers of Sarah’s village all got together and held a giant fair. All the various farms set up tables to display their very best produce. Awards were handed out for the best tomatoes, the best carrots, and the best garlic. Sarah’s farm always got the award for the best garlic, because it actually was the best, and also because it was the only farm to grow only garlic, and sometimes radishes.

The queen was in the habit of going to the fair every year, and so she decided to go, and first have a look at the dog her courier had mentioned, but to do this she did a most curious thing. She did not want to be recognized and so that afternoon she dressed as a commoner. Then, all alone, without even a single attendant, she walked to the cottage the courier had named, and there from a distance she observed her beloved dog, Rex, frolicking and playing in a garden with a young girl.

The Queen wept, and when she was done with weeping she wiped her tears and returned to her coach. The queen felt moved to the depths of the essence that was her soul, and why? She was moved in this way because all her life she had wished in her heart that she could have been a simple farm girl, unencumbered by all the pomp and ceremony that her position in the world made unavoidable every day. She hated the hours it took just to have her attendants dress her, and there were the state luncheons and dinners lasting long into the night with odious guests she could never stand.

And so, like so many Queens, and even Empresses before her she had constructed a farmhouse, with gardens and even a barn with cows goats and chickens where, as often as she could manage to get away, she would go and play the farm girl, and she even would go so far as to milk the cows, feed chickens and collect eggs wherever they could be found. And that is the simplest and most obvious explanation of why the Queen abandoned her beloved dog, for she thought that Rex was where he ought to have been, and she was not.

She felt no interest in the fair and so set off for home. She felt in her heart that she could not take her dog away from its new home, however, even so, as the cottage with her dog drew near and she spotted it in the distance, she asked her driver to stop, so she might take one last parting look, and as she gazed out of her window Rex suddenly recognized her and in that very instant she inadvertently clicked her tongue, by force of habit and despite herself and Rex leaped through the open window and the coach drove swiftly away. Once reunited with her dog, all her tender thoughts of the farm girl fled away as well.

Sara, watching from her garden, understood exactly what had happened, and now understood whom her dog belonged to, as everyone in the kingdom knew the Queen’s coach.

Then one week went by. People thought that Sarah would be upset, but she claimed that she was certainly grown up enough to know that you have to return the Queens’ dog to the Queen, and it was probably for the best. But Sarah’s teacher could see that she was really unhappy, because on two separate occasions, she got 4 times 4 wrong, and had difficulty for a while with division, which before she got perfectly, even with fractions.

But after a week Sarah received an invitation to attend lunch with the Queen at the Palace. Sarah’s mother stayed up all night sewing a dress for her daughter, but did not really need to because the Queen was the sort of person who would have preferred overalls, even if they had those brown spots on the knees you get when you are planting radishes.

The Queen sent a carriage for Sarah in the morning, and the carriage took her to the Palace. When the carriage pulled into the parking lot of the Palace, Rex was asleep under the Queen’s feet under her throne, but in a dream he thought he smelled the smell of radishes, and so he opened one eye and looked around.

A little later, as Sarah was coming up the long staircase that led to the Queen’s audience room, Rex began to think he could smell garlic, as well as radishes, and so he woke up and started looking all around.

Then Sarah appeared, way at the end of the hall that led to the throne room, and Rex jumped up, ran right past the edge of the red carpet, and all the way down the hall to Sarah. The Queen did not bother to click her tongue because she knew it would do no good, and everyone else seeing Rex had run past the carpet started clicking but Rex did not hear anything.

So the Queen invited Sarah to come to the Palace every Saturday afternoon, to babysit Rex, whom she now would sometimes call Ralph. Sarah was paid one gold coin a week, and given a permanent pass to the Museum.

The Queen said, “Do you like to read?” Sarah answered “Yes,” even though it was not her best subject, but she knew it was the answer the Queen wanted to hear. Sarah was therefore given a permanent pass to the library as well as the museum, and, having never seen anything like either place, she found the two very fascinating and so she began to work on a special project.

—Richard Britell

For Elke M, April of 2021, During the covid, but after the trump