"You don't want much, do you, dear old boy?" said Clarence. "You don't suppose I can show you how to build a railway train when you haven't got any of the bally materials or appliances, do you?"
"Your Royal Highness has but to name them, and they shall be procured."
"They're not to be got here," replied Clarence. "If I tried to tell you what they were, you wouldn't be any the wiser!" He spoke nothing but the truth, for he had but the sketchiest acquaintance with the composition of any kind of machinery.
"Perhaps His Majesty," suggested the Marshal, who had long ago taken King Sidney's measure, "is better able to instruct us in these mighty secrets?"
"H'm, well, to tell you the truth," confessed the King, "although I've been in the habit of using railways, motors, electric light, telephones, and so forth constantly, I can't pretend to more than a general notion of how they work. Couldn't make any of 'em, you know. Not my line of business!"
"If that is indeed the case," said the President, "we find it the more difficult to understand why his Royal Highness should have reproached us for an ignorance which is no greater than either his own or your Majesty's."
"I wasn't reproaching you," said the Crown Prince, a little awkwardly, "I was only telling you how differently things are managed where we come from. But after all, that isn't the point, so we'll say no more about it. Let's get back to the Gnomes. One of you—I think it was the gentleman with the grey topknot—objected that there was no other useful way of employing them, except in the mine. Well, of course, we've thought all that out," he declared, though, as a matter of fact, the idea had only just struck him. "We intend to set 'em to work at laying out a golf links, and when they've done that, we shall keep 'em on as caddies. They're such nippy little devils that they ought to be jolly useful.... Ah, naturally, you wouldn't know what Golf is. Well, Golf happens to be a thing I do know something about. I can teach you that right enough. It's simply the greatest game going, and you'll be grateful to me for introducing it. Don't worry," he added, as some of the Council expressed dissent, "nobody's asking you to learn unless you like. I shouldn't say myself that any of you—except perhaps the Marshal—was very likely to shape into a 'plus' man. I fancy he's got the makings of a golfer in him, though, and, once I've got the course laid out and given him a lesson or two, I bet you'll see he'll be as keen as mustard."
Before the Council broke up, the ex-Regent undertook that, as soon as Clarence had selected the ground, the Gnomes should be removed from their present quarters, and placed under the Crown Prince's directions.
"Never again, Sidney," declared the Queen afterwards, "will you and I sit through one of those tiresome councils! We'll leave them to manage their own silly business, and if there's anything that requires our signatures, they can bring the papers to us, and we'll sign them in our own rooms. If there should be any difficulty, we can always ask the Marshal—he's so very sympathetic and helpful."
"Very," said the King, "oh, very—that is, I half fancied now and then—but I believe he means us well. Yes, on the whole, my dear, I think he's a person we can trust."