KING ARTHUR AND HIS KNIGHTS.
III.—ARTHUR AND THE KNIGHTS.
"Arthur must have been tickled to death," said Jack, when his father told how Sir Ector and Kaye knelt before him and hailed him as King. "Wouldn't it be fine, Mollie, if somebody should ring our front-door bell now, and come in and prove that you and I were King and Queen of somewhere, and that papa was bringing us up for Queen Victoria or Emperor William, for instance?"
"I don't think so at all," said Mollie. "I don't want to be Queen, and I don't think you'd make a good King, either. You slide down the banisters too much to make a very royal King. Kings don't do such things."
"I guess they would if they could," said Jack. "What's the good of being a King if you can't do whatever you wanted to?"
"I'd rather be a President, though," put in Mollie. "Kings have to wear solid gold crowns with prongs on 'em all the time, and it must be dreadfully uncomfortable."
"Very true, my dear," said her father. "A crown is about the most uncomfortable possession a man can have, and Arthur, I fancy, felt very much at first as you do. He felt very badly indeed when he learned that Sir Ector was not his father, and that Kaye was nothing but a chum, instead of a brother, as he had always thought, for he loved them both more than he did any one else in the world. So when Sir Ector knelt before him and said, 'You are the rightful King of England,' Arthur opened his eyes as widely as he could and started back in amazement."
"I guess he thought it was an April-fool," laughed Mollie.
"At first he may have thought that," said the Story-teller, "but when he remembered that great Knights like Sir Ector wouldn't play jokes of that kind he didn't think it any more. He began to grow uneasy and unhappy, for instead of throwing his cap into the air and crying hurrah, as Jack would do if he were elected President of the United States to-morrow, he gave a groan and an exclamation of dismay.