All the same he got up from his desk, and in deep cogitation began walking about the room. The carpet with its rich variegated pattern, like Max's conversation, helped him to think; until certain deliveries of a royal courier from abroad came to divert his attention to more particular and family affairs.
Nevertheless his mind had again reverted to its vetoed notion when, an hour later, on his way to the Queen's apartments he met the Princess Charlotte tripping gaily along the corridor. She stopped to give him her "return home" embrace. "How well you are looking, papa!" cried she, admiring his flushed countenance. But the King, though he smiled, remained preoccupied with the embryos of statecraft.
"My dear," he said abruptly, "do you think that I am popular?"
"Why, yes, papa, of course!" she said, opening sweet eyes at him. "Doesn't everybody cheer you when you go anywhere?"
"I think," said her father dubiously, lending his ears in fancy to the sound, "I think that crowds get into the habit of cheering,—not because they care for me, but just because there are a lot of them, and they like to hear the sound of their own voices."
"But sometimes you have quite small crowds," said his daughter, "and still they cheer."
"Yes, yes," he allowed, "so they do. Yes, even the nursemaids, I notice, wave their handkerchiefs when I ride by them in the park. And I daresay some of them do it because they are sorry for me."
"Sorry for you, papa?"
"My dear, wouldn't you be sorry to have to be King now-a-days? It's no fun, I can assure you."
"I wouldn't like to be King always," said Charlotte, with honesty; "but you know, papa, with all the Silver Jubilee celebrations coming on you are quite immensely popular."