"Keeping things as they are is not revolutionary," replied his Majesty, "though it's a hard enough thing to do now-a-days."
"But," objected his wife, "they must pass something, or else how would they earn their salaries?"
"That's it!" said the King,—"payment of members; another of those unnecessary reforms thrust on us by the example of England."
"Ah, yes!" answered his wife, feeling about for an intelligent ground of agreement, "England is so rich; she can afford it."
"It isn't that at all," retorted his Majesty; "plenty of other countries have had to afford it before now. But it was only when England did it that we took up with the notion. We are always imitating England: the attraction of contraries, I suppose, because we are surrounded by land as they are by water. Why else did they start turning me into a commercial traveler, sending me all over Europe and round the world to visit colonies that no longer really belong to us? Only because they are doing the same thing over in England."
"They saw that you wanted change of air," said the Queen.
"Change of fiddlesticks!" answered the King; "I consider it a most dangerous precedent to let a sovereign be too long out of his own country. It makes people imagine they can do just as well without him!"
The Queen looked at her husband with shrewd and kindly furtiveness. She had a funny little suspicion that the ministry did at times greatly prefer his absence to his presence: and that "change of fiddlesticks" was really their underlying motive. About this monarch she herself had no illusions: he was a dear, but he fussed; and when once he began fussing he required an enormous amount of explanation and persuasion. Even she, therefore, was not at all averse to letting him go on these State outings in which she need not always accompany him. They gave him something fresh to think about, and to her a time of leisure when she need not pretend to think about anything she did not understand.
"Of course," went on the King, "it makes good copy for the newspapers. The press is powerful, and governments are obliged now-a-days to throw in a certain amount of spectacle to keep it in a good temper. We are sent off to perform somewhere, and after us come the penny-a-liner and the cinematograph."
"Oh! my dear, much more than a penny-a-liner," corrected the Queen; "I heard of one correspondent who makes £5,000 a year. And think how good for trade! Besides, do not we get the benefit of it?"