"They were, your Royal Highness. Though, unfortunately, I cannot speak of my own knowledge. As your Majesties may be aware, during the short time they were spared to me I was too young to appreciate their society."
"Well, well, Count," said Queen Selina, perceiving that this was delicate ground, "it's all very sad, but you must try not to think about it now. The Marshal tells me you give a great deal of your time to growing vegetables. How do tomatoes do with you?"
"I don't pay any attention to tomatoes, your Majesty," he replied, with a blush that few tomatoes could have outdone. "My efforts have been chiefly directed to pumpkins. I have reared some particularly fine ones. I am very fond of pumpkins."
"Jolly little things, ain't they?" put in Clarence. "So playful!"
"Are they?" said the Count with perfect simplicity. "I did not know that. But then I have never attempted to play with my pumpkins."
"Haven't you?" said Clarence. "Well, you get 'em to play kiss-in-the-ring with you, and you'll find out how frisky they can be!"
"I do not know anything about kissing," he confessed, "except that it is very wrong."
"Not pumpkins," said the Crown Prince. "There's no harm in that! Ask the bishop!"
"I say, old girl," he remarked to Princess Edna, after their visitor had taken his departure, "what on earth induced the Mater to tell that lanky overgrown lout we should be pleased to see him any time he cared to drop in? We shall have the beggar running in and out here like a bally rabbit, you see if we don't!"
"Not if you intend to go on insulting him, Clarence, as you did to-day at lunch," replied Edna coldly.