“Come, please—Prince.” She led him toward the group, taking care to keep slightly aside, and not directly in front of him; for she knew, from Mr. Mearely’s dissertations on form, that one must never turn one’s back squarely upon royalty.
“Mrs. Witherby—Mr. Howard—this gentleman whom you have insulted as grossly as you have insulted me—is” (she consulted the paper). “Wait—here it is. This gentleman is His Highness, Prince Adam Lapid, reigning Duke of Woodseweedsetisky.” She addressed the Prince, diffidently: “I trust I have pronounced Your Highness correctly?”
“Er—the pronunciation is perfect. The w’s are generally v’s—that is, approximately—but to the Saxon mind, of course, that is mere fussiness.” He drew near and murmured for her ear alone. “What’s the idea?”
She did not hear his query; because she was in the medium stage of a perfect curtsy. He saw her silver draperies spread, like a moonlit breaker flowing to his feet; and he put a hand over his heart and bowed, as a prince should—a low and stately bow it was; but it may have been done to hide the mirth in his eyes.
Except to clasp each other’s hands, Mabel and Corinne had not moved. Howard stared. Mrs. Witherby sat rigid, still muttering “prince.” The etiquette for the occasion was to be defined by a humbler than they.
Constable Marks moved into the circle, and took up his position a little to the left of His Highness—as the tradition is, for armed guardians of the Crown, the left side being the weaker, because farther from the right arm and, possibly, also, because nearer the heart (so the history of royal love-affairs, with attendant political catastrophes, would suggest). Slowly he removed his broken straw hat and held it stiffly in front of him on his thumb.
Mrs. Witherby half rose, hesitated, got up, and bowed twice. Dissatisfied with that, she attempted a curtsy. Howard was on his feet now, with head inclined in a respectful attitude. The prince honoured Mrs. Witherby by returning her salutations. She shook Corinne’s arm.
“Get up. Commoners must rise when princes are about. Haven’t you any etiquette?”
A master of ceremonies seemed to have been miraculously provided in the obsequious person of Mr. Alfred Marks, a citizen of a land where such as he eat their bread and cheese with a lithographed group of the Royal Family beside the God-Bless-Our-Home motto, over the kitchen table and where the lowliest Whitechapel pushcart man knows the King’s taste in Court procedure and is free to agree with it or not. He spoke now with reproof.
“Somebody ought to give ’Is ’Ighness a seat. ’Twouldn’t be reg’lar for me,—bein’ on juty an’ hactin’ as the Royal Guard, so to speak.”