The mother-soul’s good-morning to her babe was interrupted by a message from the King. She was to attend him at once in the Garden of Bad Luck.
Dismay possessed Dolores. Probably His Majesty meant to probe deeper, with his knife-like cynicisms of last night, into the wounds of her former state. But a thought of the folly of foreboding soon steadied her. She had no choice.
“I shall go at once,” she told the maid. “I feel quite rested and strong.”
“I should suggest to Madame that she omit to mention her restful night,” Adeline said. “Otherwise he will not permit that it happen again. He awaits beside the Hard Luck fountain.”
Dolores in turn offered advice. “While I am gone, doff that cap and apron and imagine you are a lady again. He’ll never know, for I won’t tell and the babe can’t.”
“Never know, he?” The French soul smiled briefly. “Madame perhaps will excuse, but evidently she is not yet acquainted with m’lord of reversals. Know? I myself should tell him if none else did. He would compel me to do so.”
To Dolores’ relief, the King seemed to have forgotten her regrettable history when she found him awaiting her at the spot of his appointment. At any rate, he made no reference thereto.
“I am going to show you around my place,” he informed her. “I take a pleasant shame in it. Guess I’ve got what real-estaters call ‘the property sense’—a brand of nonsense.”
He led her through an avenue-like effect of lime trees to a lawn of dwarfed red-top, where stood a winged vehicle, as much an improvement over the planes of Earth as was the motor-car over Grimes’ one-horse shay.
“My aeromobile,” he announced with prideful gesture.