Then, rather at a loss as to the exact etiquette of arresting one’s self, he bowed slightly and waited.
The door into the King’s bedchamber opened.
The Chancellor came through, his face working. It closed behind him.
“Gentlemen of the Council,” he said. “It is my duty my duty—to announce—” His voice broke; his grizzled chin quivered; tears rolled down his cheeks. “Friends,” he said pitifully, “our good King—my old comrade—is dead!”
The birthday supper was over. It had ended with an American ice-cream, brought in carefully by Pepy, because of its expensiveness. They had cut the cake with Boby on the top, and the Crown Prince had eaten far more than was good for him.
He sat, fingering the Lincoln penny and feeling extremely full and very contented.
Then, suddenly, from a far-off church a deep-toned bell began to toll slowly.
Prince Ferdinand William Otto caught it. St. Stefan’s bell! He sat up and listened. The sound was faint; one felt it rather than heard it, but the slow booming was unmistakable. He got up and pushed his chair back.
Other bells had taken it up, and now the whole city seemed alive with bells—bells that swung sadly from side to side, as if they said over and over: “Alas, alas!”
Something like panic seized Ferdinand William Otto. Some calamity had happened. Some one was perhaps his grandfather.