“I mustn’t be king, because mamma wouldn’t like it. She made me promise never to say——”
“Tommy, where are you?” interrupted Cyril, as the other children looked curiously at their new playmate. “Your mother wants you.”
“I don’t want to go to bed!” protested the little King tearfully, while the tall girl who had spoken first, and who had been winding one of his curls round her finger, laughed.
“We thought he was such a good little boy!” she said.
“I hope you always remember what your mother tells you,” said Cyril, in laboriously bad Thracian. “Come along, Tommy. Give me your hands, and I’ll jump you down.”
But the little King drew himself up. “You are not to talk to me like that,” he said. “It isn’t play, it’s rude.”
This was alarming, but Cyril laughed it off as well as he could.
“Speak English, Tommy. How am I to know what you are saying? You see that he has picked up your language from his nurse,” he explained to the other children; “I hope he has not learnt his naughtiness from you. Now, Tommy, come at once,” he added sharply.
But King Michael still refused to come, and when Cyril carried him off bodily, stiffened himself like an animated ramrod, so that it was almost impossible to hold him. Happily it was beneath his dignity to struggle or scream, and Cyril got him into the house, landing him finally at his mother’s side in the large kitchen where the women were displaying their finery. To Cyril’s intense amusement he overheard, as he came along the passage, the Queen drawing upon her imagination in picturing a gathering to be held “in the village schoolroom when we get home,” at which “my brother” would give an address on Thracia and the Thracians, illustrated by magic-lantern views, and “you and Tommy and I, Julie,” would appear on the platform in Thracian costume in order further to elucidate the lecture. The women were listening with delighted interest to Fräulein von Staubach’s rendering of her words, and it was evident that she had them all at her feet.
“I have bought two dresses, Arthur,” she said, turning to him, “and I am sure this little suit will fit Tommy. I wish we could have bought a suit for you. It would make the lecture so much more complete, wouldn’t it? And now you must give me some more money.”