"Very interesting," said the King. "What a great deal there is in the world that one doesn't know till one comes to inquire."
"About horses? Your Majesty's right there!" said the man; and his tone spoke volumes of the things which would never be written, but which those who had the care of horses knew.
As the King moved away from that brief colloquy, one phrase in particular stuck in his mind. "He was reckoned too risky after that." Was that, he wondered, what the Prime Minister was thinking about him now; had he, indeed, proved himself too risky for future use? If so there would be no yielding at the eleventh hour; and perhaps it was as well that to-morrow would see him harnessed to the royal coach for the last time.
CHAPTER XV
A DEED WITHOUT A NAME
I
The King and Queen sat in their state coach responding with low bows to the plaudits of the crowd. Their velvets and ermines lay heavy upon them, for although it was now November, the day was close and warm, and there seemed to be thunder in the air.
The King, in this his Jubilee year, had resumed wearing his crown on great State occasions, for he found that the people liked it. He had worn it at the Foot-washing; and every one then admitted that it gave the true symbolic touch to the whole ceremony. And now for the last time he was wearing it again.
Artistically he was right; a cocked hat, of nineteenth-century pattern, does not accord well with robes in the style of the sixteenth. In some countries that mistake is made by royalty out of compliment to the army; but if on these State occasions sartorial compliments are to be paid irrespective of the general effect, then surely your monarch should wear a wig as representative of the law, lawn-sleeves in honor of the Church, and divide the rest of his person impartially between the army, the navy, and the doctors. Thus all the great professions would receive their due recognition, and we should presently find so symbolical a combination just as harmonious and dignified, and as pregnant with meaning, as we do the heraldic quarterings by which the mixed blood of ancestry is so proudly displayed. We can get accustomed to anything if there is a good reason for it; but when we cease to be reasonable, beauty should be our only guide. In this case reason as well as beauty had induced King John of Jingalo to reject the cocked hat and to resume the crown.