"Come here, Rex!" called Horace Alexander, and the child rose at once. Though high-spirited and a bit of an imp, he was a reasonable, obedient, little chap enough; obedient because he was reasonable.
"What's that you've got on your head?" queried his father irritably.
"It's my c'wown," replied Rex cheerfully. "Bisvâs cut it out for me; and he's goin' to put b'wown paper to make it 'weal stiff--c'wowns onghter be stiff, 'weal stiff, oughtn't they? an' he's going to put things on it like the pictures in the papers, an' then I shall be a 'weal King, shan't I?"
"No, my boy!" said his father sharply. "Crowns don't make kings; remember that always. There was Charles the First----"; then he paused, recognising he was out of the child's depth; and the cult of the weaker brother was not often forgotten by Horace Alexander. It was the secret of his popularity; but how he managed to reconcile it with his passion for progress remained rather a mystery to some people.
"And what were you doing," he continued.
"I wasn't doin' nothin' except be king," replied the child; "but Bisvâs was doin' 'durshan.' What is a 'durshan,' daddy, 'weally?"
The childish forehead was all puckered beneath its crown, and Rex's father, for all he was entitled to linguistic letters after his name, hesitated.
"Sight," he began, "ur--appearance--ur--aspect----"
But Rex shook his head in disapproval. "Bisvâs says it's just for all the same as seein' God--didn't you, Bisvâs?"
The liquid Urdu to which the little fellow's voice turned, echoed through the sunshine to where the tall old trooper, risen to his full height, stood smiling.