“That name.”
“But Mr. Hitchings—however did you come to have him for a friend?”
“Verbeenaheimer,” laughed the Crown Prince, “that wasn’t Mr. Hitchings. It’s Charlie of Austria. He expects to organize a circus troupe and enter Vienna with a large company of desert men, himself disguised as a dancing girl. Then some night they will burst from the tent and Charlie will pull his crown from under his skirts and—there you are! He’ll be king again—for a minute.
“But me and popper and the chain of breweries——”
“Ah!”
“Yah!”
She snuggled to him closer and closer and closer and closer and closer than that. Her magnificent long black lashes dusted off his cheek. She smoothed back the fair hair that had been so strange to her in company with the jet whiskers that once he had worn. She thought of Cyril Gristmille and then she clung to him like a little leech—only, you know, a warm leech.
“My prince—my prince—my Sheik Amut Never Ben King,” she sighed gustfully.
Entranced he grasped her to him fiercely his lips against her lips! Their eyes were blazing, their veins throbbing, their bodies writhing as he whispered tensely, tickling her under the chin:
“Tweetsy, tweetsy, Verbeena mine!”