He slept, at once, so soundly, that he never stirred, when, in a little while, Judith slipped noiselessly into the room. Crossing to the bed, she stood, for a moment or two, looking down at him, with all the unfathomable tenderness in her dark, mysterious eyes, which she had asked him to forget, which she had made him forget.
Suddenly, she leant over the bed, and kissed him lightly on the forehead.
Then she slipped quickly out of the room, once again.
CHAPTER V
t was to the sound of the patter of bare feet, on the polished floor of his bedroom, followed by suppressed gurgles of joyous laughter, that the King awoke, in the morning. Bright sunshine was streaming into the room, through the still open window door. Button and Bill, their faces rosy with health and sleep, and their hair still tousled, as it had come from their pillows, engagingly droll little figures in their diminutive sleeping suits, stood at his bedside, watching him with shining, mischievous eyes. As he sat up in bed, they flung themselves at him, with triumphant shouts, wriggling and swarming all over him, as they essayed to smother him, under his own bedclothes and pillows.
At the end of two or three hilarious, and vivid moments of mimic fight, the King brought the heavy artillery of his bolster to bear on his enemies, smiting them cunningly in the "safe places" of their wriggling, deliciously fresh little bodies, and so driving them, inch by inch, down to the foot of the bed, where, still laughing and gurgling gloriously, they rolled themselves up, to evade his blows, like a couple of young hedgehogs.
Then the King flung his bolster on to the floor, and, reaching out his arms, took his enemies captive, tucking them, one under each arm, and holding them there, kicking and protesting, but wholly willing prisoners.
Button, at this point, although suspended under the King's left arm, more or less in mid-air, contrived to wriggle his right hand free, and held it out gravely, to be shaken. On the strength of his seven years, Button had lately given up kissing in public, and begun to affect the formal manner of the man of the world, in matters of courtesy, as shrewdly observed in Uncle Bond.