“I’ll give you a cracker-cap,” said the Commissioner’s wife. “Come along with me, Toby, and we’ll choose it.”
The cracker-cap was a stiff, three-pointed vermilion-and-tinsel splendor. His Majesty the King fitted it on his royal brow. The Commissioner’s wife had a face that children instinctively trusted, and her action, as she adjusted the toppling middle spike, was tender.
“Will it do as well?” stammered His Majesty the King.
“As what, little one?”
“As ve wiban?”
“Oh, quite. Go and look at yourself in the glass.”
The words were spoken in all sincerity and to help forward any absurd “dressing-up” amusement that the children might take into their minds. But the young savage has a keen sense of the ludicrous. His Majesty the King swung the great cheval-glass down, and saw his head crowned with the staring horror of a fool’s cap—a thing which his father would rend to pieces if it ever came into his office. He plucked it off, and burst into tears.
“Toby,” said the Commissioner’s wife, gravely, “you shouldn’t give way to temper. I am very sorry to see it. It’s wrong.”
His Majesty the King sobbed inconsolably, and the heart of Patsie’s mother was touched. She drew the child on to her knee. Clearly it was not temper alone.
“What is it, Toby? Won’t you tell me? Aren’t you well?”