"But you told me they had seven children," said the King.
"That is so, Sir," replied the Comptroller-General; "it has been a relationship of long standing. Morally, of course, that only makes the matter worse."
The King did not know why morally the permanence of that arrangement should make it worse. It was a statement which he accepted without question; it came to him with authority from one whose guidance in such matters he had ever been accustomed to follow and find correct. Before the weight of the moral law, he bowed his head and gave up the ghost of the dead steeplejack. The widow and the seven orphans passed out of existence; they ceased any longer to be mouths and hearts of flesh, and became instead abstractions to be set in a class apart—one not eligible for rewards. To such as these no public declaration of the royal bounty could be made.
"Very well," said the King despondently, "strike off the memorandum! The twenty pounds need not go."
An hour later the Queen came in and found him sitting alone and miserable in his chair. She spoke to him, but he did not answer. Then as she drew nearer, to find out if anything were really the matter, his misery found voice.
"I can't move! I am unable to move!" he moaned.
"What is it, dear?" she inquired, "sciatica?"
His answer came from a source she could not fathom.
"No one," he murmured in a tone of deep discouragement, "no one will ever call me 'Jack.'"