All the pictures of Elizabeth when she is queen show her as having very frizzy hair all piled up. I have to get all this done soon, because on Monday, Halloween, I have a riding lesson. Gran has been so great about letting me take as many riding lessons as I want. I really love it, but there’s only one problem. Lisa is always hanging around. She’s sort of the darling of the stables. She won some big horse show thing a couple of weeks ago. Nobody sees the totally snarky side of her—at least not as far as I can tell. She’s constantly mooning around Jamie. “Oh, Jamie, can you help me with this curb strap? I think it’s too tight. . . . Oh, Jamie, I think I lost a barrette when I was brushing Miss Dimples last night. It just fell out of my hair. . . .” Then she tosses her hair and flashes a smile. “Shameless!” my mom would say.

But forget Lisa. Now I’m obsessed with how I was able to get back with the ruff. But what triggered my return? I am trying to remember every single minute of what happened before I left. The prince and I went into the tree hollow, which was pretty big. I mean, the two of us fit there quite comfortably. There was a little makeshift table made from a stump. The prince fetched a piece of cloth. I said something like “I’ll do that . . . after all, I’m the servant.” And he said, “Oh no, I get to be the servant, because I’m a prince and I get to make the rules. . . .”

I laughed at that, but he insisted. So he spread the cloth, and then he went and fetched two small plates and a tin that had some very stale cakes. So then I said, “If you’re the servant, who am I?” He scratched his chin and thought a bit. “Well, you can be a visiting ambassador from another country—like . . . like Spain. They’re always sending people from Spain to try to make a marriage between Princess Mary and Prince Philip of Spain.”

Then after I got back to the palace, Sara told me that there was to be a banquet that night with minstrels, dancing, and, yes, jesters and fools. She knew a secret place where we could watch the action. Sara is pretty nice. But she’s older than me, maybe eighteen. We spied on the so-called merriment, but I did not find it merry or amusing.