“I can make another then,” she said, complacently, as though that objection were easily met. “May I put it on your head?”
“Certainly;” and Regie bent his head forward from the pillow.
“Nan stood in great awe of the apparatus of weights attached to the cot to keep Regie's limb from shortening while the broken bone was knitting.
“Are you sure it won't do your leg any harm?” she asked, nervously, holding the crown, poised in both hands, above his head, for she could only boast eight years, and was rather a timid little body. Regie laughed outright at this, and Harry shouted, “Of course not, goosie!” with true brotherly disgust.
Thus encouraged she dropped the crown on to Regie's head.
“You look lovely in it,” she said, bringing the hand-glass from the bureau; “you can lean your head back, it won't hurt the crown.”
“It hurts me though,” said Regie, settling back against the pillow, and holding the little mirror at arm's length that he might see the general effect; “it pricks.”
“I do not think a king ought to mind such a thing as a prick,” Nan remarked, seriously, for she possessed a lively imagination, and, for the time being, Regie was a real little king.
“Perhaps not,” said Regie, recalling something about “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown” (which proverb had once been set for a copy in his writing book at school), and thinking how very true it was. “But you have not told me anything about the body-guard,” he added.
“As I understand it,” said Harry, who liked to use a big word when he could, “the body-guard sort of takes care of the king, and does whatever he tells 'em to do.”