“Oh, the crown prince!” said the boy, rumpling up his black hair. “He has a lot of names. Seven, I think.”
“Whee!” said Hank. “Think of that! Every time his mother calls him, calling like John-Henry-George-Washington-Christopher-Columbus-James.”
The boy laughed until he cried. “I don’t believe they use them all at once,” he said. Then he turned to Lawrence. “If you are an American, you know all about football, don’t you?” he said. “The boys here don’t know how to play it, and I am crazy to start a team. The English game is not like the American at all, they say.”
Lawrence hopped out of the car, eager to talk on his favorite subject, for next to flying he loved football. Together the boys wandered down the slope, and sitting at the foot of a tree with their knees drawn up, they chewed grass roots while they discussed the great American game. After awhile they returned to the car and sat on the running-board while Lawrence wrote his address for Modo, who was going to write to him for some books on the subject. Hank and Bill, smoking lazily in the car, leaned over with words of advice.
They had been sitting there only a few minutes when another bicyclist rolled through the small gate. This time the rider was in the uniform of a house servant, impressive with silk stockings and much gold lace. He spied Modo, and with an abrupt motion stopped his wheel and dismounted with a low bow.
“Your Highness, Her Majesty desires your attendance,” he remarked to the boy impressively, bowed again and, backing off a pace, mounted his wheel and went back through the gate.
“Mother is all fussed up about this party,” said Modo smiling. “And I suppose she wants to drill me in something. It is an awful nuisance.” He looked at Hank and laughed. “I hope you don’t mind,” he said. “And they don’t call me all seven names every time!” He waved a merry good-bye to the petrified airmen, shook hands with Lawrence, and promising to write soon, ran off, trundling his wheel.
“Somebody pinch me!” begged Hank, after a long pause. “Your Highness and me joshing him about his name, and all that!”
“A real boy!” ejaculated Bill.
“Yes, sir! Nuthin’ but a real boy! Kind you see anywhere. And the crown prince! ‘Mother is all fussed up’ says he. Well, I am in mother’s class on that! Say, he’s dropped his pencil! I’m goin’ to keep it. Gosh, this will make talk back home. ‘One morning in Morania,’ says I, ‘me and Modo was talkin’.’ ‘Modo who?’ says somebody, and I says, ‘Why, you nut, don’t you study hist’ry? I mean His Highness the Crown Prince Modo of Morania!’ And then I’ll flash this pencil with a crown printed on the side of it. Wow!”