Oh, curse the day that I set out with such tyrants! A pretty figure of fun I should make before your beautiful German, covered with mud to the knees.

No, you shall hang me first! Why couldn't O'Toole do his own work, the ninny, I hate him! He's tall enough, the great donkey; but no, I must do it, who am shorter, and even then not short enough for him and you, but you must drag me through the dirt without heels!" Wogan let her run on; he was at his wits' end what to do.

All this turmoil, these tears, these oaths and blows, came from nothing more serious than this, that Jenny, to make her height less remarkable, must wear no heels.

It was ludicrous, it was absurd, but none the less the whole expedition, carried to the very point of completion, must fail, utterly and irretrievably fail, because Jenny would not for one day go without her heels.

The Princess must remain in her prison at Innspruck; the Chevalier must lose his wife; the exertions of Wogan and his friends, their risks, their ingenuity, must bear no fruit because Jenny would not show herself three inches short of her ordinary height.
O'Toole had warned him there would be a difficulty; but that the difficulty should become an absolute hindrance, should spoil a scheme of so much consequence, that was inconceivable.
Yet there was Jenny sobbing her heart out on the steps not half a mile from the villa; the minutes were passing; the inconceivable thing was true.