“The throne of some fairy king?”
“The throne of King Louis Philippe,” answered Phil. In a few words he explained how it happened to be there in the company of the busts.
“It is not a very comfortable seat,” grandma remarked.
“They’d make a better one than that at Grand Rapids,” Will added.
“Will you try it, Miss Rowrer?” Caracal hastened to ask. “Be seated on the throne; you might believe yourself a queen.”
“Ah! that’s all the same to me,” said Miss Rowrer.
“The queen you are worthy to be,” Caracal corrected, by way of compliment. “You would not have ill become Louis Philippe’s throne, I imagine.”
“I hope not, indeed,” Ethel replied. “What! that bourgeois king, that king of the golden mean, who was neither brave nor cowardly, without vice as without virtue, flat, like a pancake; an old wolf turned shepherd? And I could sit on a throne and fancy myself the consort of that imitation goodman, be queen of such a king? Even for his kingdom, I would not!”
Helia looked at Miss Rowrer as she prodded with her parasol the worn velvet of the throne. She thought of her own half hesitation to sit down in it the first time she came to the oasis, and how she had answered Phil: “A king’s throne! You wouldn’t think of it—a poor girl like me!” To her it had seemed a sort of sacrilege, whereas Miss Rowrer, quite the contrary, turned her back on it with disdain and walked away, saying to the duke and Phil:
“Louis Philippe was possibly a king, but at any rate he was not a man! The people did well to cast him out.”