There can be no doubt that Pollyooly had smacked Prince Adalbert of Lippe-Schweidnitz with far greater violence than ever she had smacked the abhorred Henry Wiggins for yelling "Ginger!" at her. There can be no doubt that the prince had been so smacked. Yet Pollyooly's face remained the face of an angel child; her devotion to the Lump and her politeness to those with whom she came into contact showed no signs of weakening; and no one could honestly assert that Prince Adalbert looked a bit more like a pig than he had always done. If anything he had lost something of his likeness to that nutritious animal.
At any rate there was no sign of degradation in his behaviour. He now walked about Pyechurch beach as peacefully as you could wish: he destroyed no castles; he kicked no children.
Even that fierce, stout, moustachioed and military Prussian, the Baron von Habelschwert, seemed to have derived benefit from his violent impingement on the left shoulder of the Honourable John Ruffin. Though his more mature nature should have been fixed, there can be no doubt that he wore a softer air, and no longer trod the English sand with the air of a disdainful but perfumed conqueror.
He was by no means an observant man; but stupid as he was, he could not fail to perceive the change in his pupil, for it was forced on his attention by the fact that the prince did not kick his shins for seventy-two hours. The baron was at first surprised, then dismayed: he feared that the fine Hohenzollern spirit of his young charge might have suffered a lasting, weakening shock from his encounter with that angel child; and when the prince for three successive mornings and afternoons did not assault a single little girl, however much smaller than himself those who came within his reach chanced to be, the fear deepened.
Oddly enough the subdued prince did not seem to regard Pollyooly with the bitterness which might have been expected. He did not even shun the sight of her. Indeed, as he made his royal progress along the beach, he would pause and regard her with puzzled but manifestly quite respectful interest, as she played actively not far from her little brother, the Lump, with her young friends.
The baron regarded the Honourable John Ruffin in a very different manner; he could not set eyes on him without scowling horribly. It was the desire of his heart to have the blood of Pollyooly's protector; and though the conduct of Pollyooly had oddly but considerably weakened his confident expectation of the immediate subjugation of the English people by his imperial master he longed with a greater fervour than had ever before burned in him for THE DAY.
The conversations, strictly confined to the British tongue, between the baron and his pupil, were always of the briefest and often truculent. The prince was a silent child, by reason of the fact that he had nothing to say. But one morning as they came down to the beach he startled the baron by saying:
"I want to blay."
"Yes, 'ighness, whad shall we blay ad?" said the Baron von Habelschwert uncomfortably, after a little hesitation.
"I don't want to blay wiz you," said the prince in a tone which showed, beyond any possibility of misconception, that on that matter his mind was made up.