A small crowd lined up and watched the passing of the little Prince. As he passed, men lifted their hats and women bowed. He smiled right and left, and, took two short steps to one of Nikky’s long ones.
“I have a great many friends,” he said with a sigh of content, as they neared the riding-school. “I suppose I don’t really need a dog.”
“Look here,” said Nikky, after a pause. He was not very quick in thinking things out. He placed, as a fact, more reliance on his right arm than on his brain. But once he had thought a thing out, it stuck. “Look here, Highness, you didn’t treat your friends very well yesterday.”
“I know;” said Prince Ferdinand William Otto meekly. But Prince Ferdinand William Otto had thought out a defense. “I got back all right, didn’t I?” He considered. “It was worth it. A policeman shook me!”
“Which policeman?” demanded Nikky in a terrible tone, and in his fury quite forgot the ragging he had prepared for Otto.
“I think I’ll not tell you, if you don’t mind. And I bought a fig lady. I’ve saved the legs for you.”
Fortune smiled on Nikky that day. Had, indeed, been smiling daily for some three weeks. Singularly enough, the Princess Hedwig, who had been placed on a pony at the early age of two, and who had been wont to boast that she could ride any horse in her grandfather’s stables, was taking riding-lessons. From twelve to one—which was, also singularly, the time Prince Ferdinand William Otto and Nikky rode in the ring—the Princess Hedwig rode also. Rode divinely. Rode saucily. Rode, when Nikky was ahead, tenderly.
To tell the truth, Prince Ferdinand William Otto rather hoped, this morning, that Hedwig would not be there. There was a difference in Nikky when Hedwig was around. When she was not there he would do all sorts of things, like jumping on his horse while it was going, and riding backward in the saddle, and so on. He had once even tried jumping on his horse as it galloped past him, and missed, and had been awfully ashamed about it. But when Hedwig was there, there was no skylarking. They rode around, and the riding-master put up jumps and they took them. And finally Hedwig would get tired, and ask Nikky please to be amusing while she rested. And he would not be amusing at all. The Crown Prince felt that she never really saw Nikky at his best.
Hedwig was there. She had on a new habit, and a gardenia in her buttonhole, and she gave Nikky her hand to kiss, but only nodded to the Crown Prince.
“Hello, Otto!” she said. “I thought you’d have a ball and chain on your leg to-day.”