‘I’m afraid I—er—hardly know, Your Majesty,’ he stammered.
‘Come now,’ said the King. ‘We can all do some things better than others. Think. Think hard.’
For a full half-minute Giles thought hard. Then his face brightened with a new thought.
‘I’m very good at finding things, Your Majesty,’ said he. ‘My mother always sets me hunting when she loses her thimble. And my father, if he mislays a chisel or a hammer, always calls on me to get it for him. Indeed he has often said I never was good for anything but finding.’
A quiet titter of amusement ran through the courtiers that stood about the King. But His Majesty clapped his hands and almost shouted:
‘ Finding, did you say? How splendid! That’s the very thing. It couldn’t be better. Because, do you know what I am best in?—Losing things. I lose everything. Papers, letters, riding-whips, dogs, gloves, hats, books, everything. So, you shall be the King’s Finder.’
His Majesty raised his hand for attention. Everyone stopped whispering, and no sound disturbed the silence in the long room.
‘We wish,’ said he, ‘to create a new office in the Royal Household. It is to be known as the King’s Finder, and shall, in order of honour and precedence, come between that of the Chief Equerry and the Keeper of the Great Seal. This young knight, Sir Giles Waggonwright, shall be the first to hold it. Please see,’ he added to one of the messengers at hand, ‘that the Lord Chamberlain is notified of the appointment as soon as possible.’
The King then declared the audience at an end. And everyone gladly followed him out into the dining-hall of the castle, where a grand supper had been prepared for the whole company.
The next day, Giles’s family was brought to the palace by royal command. Anne, with her father and mother, was quite overcome by the sudden dazzling importance that surrounded her brother, the boy-knight. They were most graciously treated as the private guests of His Majesty and took lunch with the King himself. The father was presented with the money that had been promised, enough to pay all his debts and to make a new start in business besides. The King asked Giles’s mother for permission to take her son with him to his capital beyond the mountains, promising to look after him well and to allow him to visit his family whenever he wished. He wanted to take Anne also, to be a maid of honour to the Queen Dowager, his own mother. But the parents could not bear to be parted from both their children at once; and it was agreed that perhaps later, when Anne was older, she should be sent to join her brother in the Royal Household.