‘What is it, Toby? There’s something on your mind. Tell me all about it, and perhaps I can help.’
‘Isn’t anyfing,’ sniffed His Majesty, mindful of his manhood, and raising his head from the motherly bosom upon which it was resting. ‘I only fought vat you—you petted Patsie ’cause she had ve blue wiban, and—and if I’d had ve blue wiban too, m-my Papa w-would pet me.’
The secret was out, and His Majesty the King sobbed bitterly in spite of the arms around him and the murmur of comfort on his heated little forehead.
Enter Patsie tumultuously, embarrassed by several lengths of the Commissioner’s pet mahseer-rod. ‘Tum along, Toby! Zere’s a chu-chu lizard in ze chick, and I’ve told Chimo to watch him till we tum. If we poke him wiz zis his tail will go wiggle-wiggle and fall off. Tum along! I can’t weach.’
‘I’m comin’,’ said His Majesty the King, climbing down from the Commissioner’s wife’s knee after a hasty kiss.
Two minutes later, the chu-chu lizard’s tail was wriggling on the matting of the veranda, and the children were gravely poking it with splinters from the chick, to urge its exhausted vitality into ‘just one wiggle more, ’cause it doesn’t hurt chu-chu.’
The Commissioner’s wife stood in the doorway and watched—‘Poor little mite! A blue sash——and my own precious Patsie! I wonder if the best of us, or we who love them best, ever understood what goes on in their topsy-turvey little heads.’
She went indoors to devise a tea for His Majesty the King.
‘Their souls aren’t in their tummies at that age in this climate,’ said the Commissioner’s wife, ‘but they are not far off. I wonder if I could make Mrs. Austell understand. Poor little fellow!’
With simple craft, the Commissioner’s wife called on Mrs. Austell and spoke long and lovingly about children; inquiring specially for His Majesty the King.