"I want do blay."
The debating voices hushed; the other children stared at him with startled eyes, then drew aside leaving him face to face with Pollyooly.
"We don't want him to play with us!" cried Kathleen, who occupied the position of chief friend to Pollyooly.
"No, we don't!" cried the two other little girls.
The prince paid no heed to them; he looked at Pollyooly and said:
"I want do blay."
Pollyooly considered him thoughtfully, weighing the question of his admission to their circle with the care it demanded. He was not very pleasant to look at since he was so podgy, snub-nosed, pasty-faced, and small-eyed; but Pollyooly, mindful of their late encounter, and inspired by the magnanimity of the victor, did not at once reject the appeal.
"Will you promise to behave properly, if we let you play with us?" she said coldly.
The Baron von Habelschwert, standing over the group and nervously twirling his fierce moustache, shuddered and groaned. It was bad enough that his young, but pig-headed Hohenzollern should play at all with children who were neither high, nor well-born; but that he should only be admitted to play with them on terms passed the limit of human decency. He had read often in the sterner, but agrarian, papers of his Fatherland, that, owing to the increase of the Socialist vote, the world was coming to an end. He felt its once so solid mass trembling beneath his feet.
But the hope of the house of Lippe-Schweidnitz, insensible to the tremor, said eagerly: