A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook

Title:      Selected Short Stories
Author:     Sinclair Lewis
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A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook

Title:      Selected Short Stories
Author:     Sinclair Lewis




This book was originally published in 1935




CONTENTS


LET'S PLAY KING

THE WILLOW WALK
(Saturday Evening Post, 1918)

THE CAT OF THE STARS
(Saturday Evening Post, 1919)

LAND
(Saturday Evening Post, 1931)

A LETTER FROM THE QUEEN
(Cosmopolitan, 1929)

THE GHOST PATROL
(Redbook, 1917)

THINGS
(Saturday Evening Post, 1919)

YOUNG MAN AXELBROD
(Century, 1917)

SPEED
(Redbook, 1919)

THE KIDNAPED MEMORIAL
(Pictorial Review, 1919)

MOTHS IN THE ARC LIGHT
(Saturday Evening Post, 1919)

THE HACK DRIVER
(Nation, 1923)

GO EAST, YOUNG MAN
(Cosmopolitan, 1930)



LET'S PLAY KING


In front of the Y Wurry Gas & Fixit Station, at Mechanicville, New
York, the proprietor, Mr. Rabbit Tait, sat elegantly upon a kitchen
chair.  He was a figure, that Rabbit Tait--christened Thomas.  His
trousers might be spotty, and their hem resembled the jagged edges
of magnified razor blades shown in the advertisements, but his
shirt was purple, with narrow red stripes, his sleeve garters were
of silvered metal, and on one sausage-like forefinger was a ring
with a ruby which would have been worth two hundred thousand
dollars had it not been made of glass.

Mr. Tait was not tall, but he was comfortably round; his face was
flushed; his red mustache was so beautifully curled that he
resembled a detective; and his sandy hair was roached down over his
forehead in one of the most elegant locks ever seen on the wrong
side of a mahogany bar.

Out from the neat white cottage behind the filling station, a
residence with all modern conveniences except bathrooms, gas and
electricity, charged his spouse, Mrs. Bessie Tait, herding their
son Terry.

Now Bessie was not beautiful.  She had a hard-boiled-egg forehead
and a flatiron jaw, which harmonized with her milk-can voice to
compose a domestic symphony.  Nor was Rabbit Tait, for all his
dashing air, an Apollo.  But Terry, aged six, was a freak of
beauty.

He was too good to be true.  He had, surely, come off a magazine
cover.  He had golden hair, like blown thistledown in a sunset, his
skin was white silk, his big eyes violet, his nose straight, and
his mouth had twisting little smiles which caused the most loyal
drunkards to go home and reform.

How he had ever happened to Rabbit and Bessie Tait, how the angels
(or the stork, or Doc McQueech) had ever happened to leave Terry in
the cottage behind the Y Wurry Filling Station instead of in the
baronial clapboard castle of the Mechanicville banker, is a mystery
which is left to the eugenists.

Bessie was speaking in a manner not befitting the mother of a
Christmas-card cherub:

"For the love of Mike, Rabbit, are you going to sit there on your
chair all afternoon?  Why don't you get busy?"

"Yeah?" contributed the cherub's father.  "Sure!  Whajjuh wamme do?
Go out and grab some bozo's bus by the radiator cap and make him
come in and buy some gas?"

"Well, you kin fix the screen door, can't you?"

"The screen door?"

"Yes, the screen door, you poor glue!"

"The screen door?  Is it busted?"

"Oh, heck, no; it ain't busted!  I just want you to come and
scratch its back where the mosquitoes been biting it, you poor sap!
And then you can take care of this brat.  Under my feet the whole
dog-gone day!"

She slapped Terry, generously and skilfully, and as Terry howled,
Rabbit rose uneasily, pale behind the bronze splendor of his curled
mustache.  Bessie was obviously in one of her more powerful moods,
and it is to be feared that we should have had the distressing
spectacle of Mr. Tait going to work, driven by his good lady's iron
jaw and granite will, had not, that second, a limousine stopped at
the filling station.

In the limousine was a lady so rich, so rich and old, that she had
to be virtuous.  She had white hair and a complexion like an old
china cup.  Glancing out while Rabbit Tait cheerily turned the
handle of the gas pump, she saw Terry.

"Oh!" she squealed.  "What an angelic child!  Is it yours?"

"Yes, ma'am," chuckled Rabbit, while Bessie ranged forward, beaming
on the treasure she had so recently slapped.

"He ought to be a choir boy," said the refined old lady.  "He would
be simply darling, at St. Juke's, in Albany.  You must take him
there, and introduce him to Doctor Wimple, the curate--he's so fond
of the little ones!  I'm sure your dear little boy could be sent to
some church school free, and THINK--these dreadful modern days--
otherwise, with his beauty, he might get drawn into the movies as a
child star, or some frightful thing like that, and be ruined!  Good
morning!"

"Jiminy, that's a swell old dame!" observed the dear little boy as
the limousine swam away.

Bessie absently slapped him, and mused, "Say, Rabbit, the old
lettuce gimme a good idea.  The kid might do good in the movies."

"Say, he might, at that.  Gee, maybe he could make a hundred bucks
a week.  I've heard some of these kids do.  Golly, I'd like to have
a cane with a silver dog's-head top!"

"Tom Tait, you get on your coat, and as soon as I scrub the kid's
mug and change his clothes, you take him right straight down to the
Main Street Foto Shoppe--I'll mind the pump--and you get some
pictures of him and we'll shoot 'em out to Hollywood."

"Oh, you gimme a big fat pain--hot day like this," sighed Mr. Tait
and, gloomily, "Besides, I might miss a job changing an inner tube.
Just like you--throw away fifty cents on a fool chance that we
might be able to farm the brat out at maybe fifty bucks a week some
day, MAYBE!"

"I don't play no maybes, never," said Bessie Tait.



Mr. Abraham Hamilton Granville, president and G. M. of the Jupiter-
Triumph-Tait Film Corporation, had adorned his Spanish mansion at
Poppy Peaks, California, with the largest private fish bowl in the
known world.  Other movie satraps might have Pompeian swimming
pools, cathedral organs and ballrooms floored with platinum, but it
was Mr. Granville's genius--so had it been, indeed, ever since he
had introduced the Holdfast Patent Button, which had put over the
renowned Abe Grossburg Little Gents' Pants Co., back in 1903--I say
it was Mr. Granville's peculiar genius that he always thought up
something a little different.

He had caused cunning craftsmen to erect a fish bowl--no vulgar
aquarium but a real, classy, round, glass, parlor fish bowl--twenty
feet high and sixty in circumference, on the red-and-green marble
terrace of his mansion, Casa Scarlatta.

Poppy Peaks is an addition to Hollywood, built by the more refined
and sensitive and otherwise rich members of the movie colony when
Hollywood itself became too common for their aristocratic
tradition.  And of all the county families and nobility of Poppy
Peaks, none were more select than the intellectual powers gathered
about Mr. Granville this hazy California August afternoon.

Besides Mr. Granville and the production manager, Mr. Eisbein,
there was Wiggins, the press agent--formerly the most celebrated
red-dog player and mint-julep specialist on the coast, a man who
was questionable only in his belief that mange cure will cause
thinning mouse-colored hair to turn into raven richness.  Was
also Miss Lilac Lavery Lugg, writer of the scenarios for such
masterpieces of cinematographic passion as "Mad Maids," "Midnight
Madness," and "Maids o' the Midnight."  She was thirty-eight and
had never been kissed.

But even more important than these mad magnates o' midnight was a
quiet and genteel family sitting together in scarlet-painted basket
chairs.

The father of the family was a gentleman named Mr. T. Benescoten
Tait.  He had a handsome ruddy mustache, curled, and a gold
cigarette case; he wore a lavender suit, white spats, patent-
leather shoes, eyeglasses with a broad silk ribbon, and a walking
stick whose top was a dog's-head of gold with ruby eyes.

His lady was less cheering in appearance, but more notable; she
wore a white-striped black suit with python-skin slippers.  She sat
rigid, with eyes like headlights.

And the third of the family was Terry Tait, billed throughout the
entire world as "The King of Boy Comedians."

He was in English shorts, with a Byronesque silk shirt open at the
throat.  But on the back of one manicured hand was a grievous smear
of dirt, which more suggested raising Cain in Mechanicville, New
York, than being sweet in Poppy Peaks; and crouched behind him was
a disreputable specimen of that celebrated breed of canines, a
Boy's Dog, who would never be exhibited in any dog show except a
strictly private one behind an ill-favored barn.

Terry was ten, this summer of 1930.

"Well, Miss Lugg," Granville said briskly, "what's your idea for
the new Terrytait?"

"Oh, I've got a perfectly priceless idea this time.  Terry plays a
poor little Ytalian bootblack--he's really the son of a count, but
he got kidnaped--"

Terry crossed over center stage and yammered, "I won't do it!  I've
been the newsboy that squealed on the gang, and I've been the son
of the truck driver that got adopted by the banker, and I've been
Oliver Twist and--I hate these dog-gone poor-city-boy rôles!  I
want to be a boy cowboy, or an Apache!"

Miss Lugg squealed, "I've got it!  How about his playing the
drummer boy of the regiment--Civil War stuff--saves the General
when he's wounded, and Lincoln invites him to the White House?"

Miss Lugg was soaring into genius before their awed eyes.  But she
was interrupted by the circular-saw voice of Mrs. T. Benescoten
Tait:

"Not on your life!  Not a chance!  Terry in them awful battle
scenes with all them tough mob extras falling over him?  That's
always the trouble with wars--they make good scenes but somebody is
likely to get hurt.  No, sir!"

"Was ist das denn fur ein Hutzpah!" growled Mr. Abraham Hamilton
Granville.  "Der Terry should take a chance, what we pay him!"

Mrs. Tait sprang up, a fury on ice.  "Yeah!  A miserable two
thousand a week!  Believe me, on the next contract it's going to be
four thousand, and if it don't come from Jupiter, there's others
that'll pay it.  Why, we don't hardly make expenses on two grand,
having to keep up a swell social position so none of these bozos
like Franchot can high-hat us, and Terry's French tutor and his
dancing teacher and his trainer and his chauffeur and--and--And
thank heaven I'm not ambitious like a lot of these bums that want
to show off how swell they are.

"Hones' sometimes I wish we'd stayed back in Mechanicville!  Mr.
Tait had a large garage there--we saved more money than what we can
here, the way you hogs want to grab off all the coin and don't
never think about the Artist and his folks and how they got to
live."

"Yes, yes, yes, maybe that's so.  Well, what's your idea of his
next rôle, Bessie?" soothed Mr. Granville.

Mr. Tait suggested, "I got an idea that--"

"You have not!  You never did have!" said Bessie.  "Now, I think it
would be nice if--I'd just love to see my Terrykins as this here
Lost Dophing--this son of Napoleon or Looey or whoever he was--YOU
know, Leglong.  Miss Lugg can look up all the historical dope on
him.  I think Terry'd look lovely in satin tights with a ruff!"

"Oh, gee!" wailed Terry.

"I don't," continued Mrs. Tait, with severe virtue, "like to see my
little boy playing these newsboy and hard-up rôles all the time.  I
don't think it's a good influence on all his Following.  It ain't
progress.  And him with his wardrobe!"

While Mrs. Tait sermonized, the butler had brought out the four-
o'clock cocktail tray and the afternoon papers, and Wiggins, the
rusty press agent, had escaped from the sound of Bessie's voice
into a nice wholesome Chicago murder story.

He piped, now:

"Say, talking about your Lost Dauphin dope, Bess, here's one in
real life.  Seems in the paper, King Udo of Slovaria died last
night of heart failure and his heir is his son, Maximilian--King
Maximilian III, he'll be--and the poor kid is only ten.  Youngest
king in the world.  But where the heck is Slovaria?"

"You tellum, Terry," said Bessie Tait.  "Terry is a wonder at
jography, same as I always was."

"I don't want to!" protested the wonder.

"You do what I tell you to, or I won't let you play baseball with
the butler's kids!  I'll--I'll make you go to tea at Princess
Marachecella's!"

"Oh, darn!" sighed Terry.

Then he recited, with the greatest speed and lack of expression,
"Slovaria is a Balkan kingdom bounded on the north by Roumania, on
the east by Zenda, on the south by Bulgaria, and on the west by
Graustark.  The capital is Tzetokoskavar.  The principal rivers
are the Rjekl and the Zgosca.  The exports are cattle, hides,
cheese and wool.  The reigning monarch is Udo VII, who is descended
from the renowned warrior King Hieronymus, and who is united in
wedlock to the famous beauty Sidonie, a cousin of the former German
Kaiser . . .  Say, Mamma, what's a Balkan kingdom?  Is it in China?"

"Now listen to him, will you?  I bet there ain't a kid in Hollywood
that's got as swell a tutor or 's educated as good as he is!"
purred Mrs. Tait.  "I was always like that, too--just crazy about
books and education."

"Wait!  Wait!  I've got it!" shrieked Miss Lilac Lavery Lugg.
"Here's our scenario, and the publicity about this new kid king
will help to put it over.  Listen!  Terry is the boy king of a--"

"I don't want to be a king!  I want to be an Apache!" wailed Terry,
but no one heeded.

Everyone (excepting Terry, Terry's mongrel pup and the butler)
listened with hot eyes, as they were caught up by the whirlwind of
Lilac's genius:

"Terry is the boy king of a Near-Eastern country.  Scenes in the
palace--poor kid, awful' lonely, sitting on throne, end of a big
throne room--the Diplomatic Hotel might let us shoot their lobby
again, like we did in 'Long Live the Czar!'  Big gang of guards in
these fur hats.  Saluting.  Show how he's a grand kid--scene of him
being nice to a poor little orphan in the yard at the castle and
his kitty had busted her leg, but he's so sick and tired of all
this royal grandeur that he turns democratic on his guard and the
court and all them, and he's meaner than a toothache to his guards
and the prime minister--the prime minister'll be a grand comedy
character, with long whiskers.  And the sub-plot is an American
reporter, a tall, handsome bird that's doing the Balkans, and say,
he's the spitting image of the king's uncle--the uncle is the
heavy; he's trying to grab the throne off the poor li'l' tike.
Well, one day the king--the kid--is out in the castle grounds
taking his exercise, riding horseback.  He's followed by a coupla
hundred cavalry troops, and he treats 'em something fierce, hits
'em and so on.

"Well, this American reporter, he's there in the grounds, and the
king sees him and thinks it's his uncle, and he says to his troops,
'Go on, beat it; there's my uncle,' he says; 'he wants to grab the
throne, but I'm not scared of him; I'll meet him alone.'  And so he
rides up to this fellow and draws his sword."

"Would he have a sword, li'l' kid like that?" hinted T. Benescoten.

"Of course he would, you fathead!" snapped Bessie.  "Haven't you
seen any pictures of the Prince of Wales?  Kings and all like that
always wear uniforms and swords--except maybe when they're playing
golf.  Or swimming."

"Certainly!"  Lilac looked icily at T. Benescoten.

Everybody, save his son Terry, usually looked icily at T.
Benescoten.

"Ziz saying," Lilac continued, "he draws his sword and rushes at
what he thinks is his uncle, but the fellow speaks and he realizes
it ain't his uncle.  Then they get to talking.  I think there ought
to be a flashback showing the reporter's--the hero's--happy life in
Oklahoma as a boy; how he played baseball and all that.  And then
the reporter--he's seen how mean the boy king is to his men, and he
gives the poor li'l' kid his first lesson in acting nice and
democratic, like all American kids do, and the king is awful' sorry
he was so mean, and he thinks this reporter is the nicest bird he
ever met, and they're walking through the grounds and they meet the
king's sister--she's the female lead--I can see Katinka Kettleson
playing the rôle--and the reporter and the princess fall in love at
first sight--of course later the reporter rescues the princess and
the king from the uncle--big ball at the palace, with a ballet, and
the uncle plans to kidnap the king, and the reporter, he's learned
all about the extensive secret passages, or maybe they might even
be catacombs, under the palace, and he leads them away and there's
a slick fight in the woods, the reporter used to be a fencing
champion and he engages the uncle in battle--swords, you know--
while the poor little king and the unfortunate princess crouch
timorously amid the leaves on the ground and the reporter croaks
the uncle and--say, SAY, I got it, this'll be something ab-so-
tively new in these royal plot pictures, they make their getaway,
after the fight, by airplane--probably they might cross the ocean
to America, and the pilot drops dead, and the reporter has a secret
wound that he has gallantly been concealing from the princess and
he faints but the pilot has taught the king how to fly and he grabs
the controls--"

"Can I fly, really?" gloated Terry.

"You can not!" snapped his mother.  "That part's doubled.  Go on,
Lilac!"

And Terry listened gloomily while Lilac led the boy king on to a
climax in which he was kidnaped by New York gun men and finally
rescued by the reporter and the prime minister--whiskered, comic,
but heroic.

"It's swell!" said Abraham Hamilton Granville.

"It'll be all right, I guess," said Mrs. T. Benescoten Tait.

"Oh, Lord!" said Wiggins the press agent.

And as for Terry Tait and the Tait mongrel, they said nothing at
all, and said it vigorously.



While Castello Marino, the residence of the Benescoten Taits, was
not so extensive as the mansion of Mr. Abraham Granville, it was a
very tasty residence, with a campanile that was an exact copy of
the celebrated Mangia tower at Siena, except that it was only one
fifth as tall, and composed of yellow tiles instead of rusty old-
fashioned brick.

In this select abode, the loving but unfortunate parents, trying so
hard to give their little boy a chance to get on in the world, were
having a good deal of trouble.

This morning Terry simply would not let his nice valet dress him.
He said he did not like his nice valet.  He said he wanted to be
let alone.

"I think, Polacci," Mrs. Tait remarked to the valet, "that Master
Tait ought to wear his polo suit to Mr. Granville's office."

"Oh, no, please, Mother!" Terry begged.  "It looks so foolish!  No
other boy wears polo costume."

"Of course not!  That's why I got it for you!"

"I won't wear it!  Not outside the house.  Everybody laughs at me.
If I wear it, I won't act."

"Oh, dear me, why I should be cursed by a son that--"

"Now put on your polo rags and mind your mother," said T.
Benescoten Tait.

"Rabbit!"

"Yes, my dear?"

"Shut up! . . .  Now, Terry, I'll let you wear your sailor suit.
The English one.  Imported.  But I want you to realize that your
disobedience just almost breaks your mother's heart!  Now hurry and
let Polacci dress you.  The limousine is waiting."

"Oh, Mother, please, have I got to go in the limousine?  It isn't
any fun to ride in a limousine.  You can't see anything.  I want to
go on the trolley.  You can see all kinds of different people on
the trolley."

"Why, Terence McGee Tait!  I never HEARD of such a thing!  Who in
the world has been talking to you about trolleys?  They're common!
There's just common vulgar folks, on trolleys!  Besides!  Give
people a chance to look at you without paying for it?  What an
idea!  Oh, dear, that's what comes from mixing with these extra
people on the lot, picking up these common ideas!  If you don't
come with me in the limousine, I won't give you one bit of caviar
for dinner!"

"I hate caviar!"

"Oh, I just don't know what I've done to deserve this!"

T. Benescoten spoke tentatively:  "How about me and Terry going on
the trolley and meeting you at Abe's?  I'd kind of like to ride on
the street car myself, for a change."

"And pick up one of those Hollywood cuties?  Not a chance!"

They took the limousine.

In Mr. Granville's office were gathered the higher nobility of the
Jupiter-Triumph-Tait organization, to listen to the completed
scenario of "His Majesty, Junior," the film suggested three weeks
ago by Lilac Lavery Lugg.  But before Miss Lugg had a chance to
read it, Wiggins, the press agent, prowling up and down in the
ecstasy of an idea as he talked, announced that the evening
newspapers said young Maximilian III of Slovaria, with his mother,
Queen Sidonie, was about to visit London.

It was hinted in the papers that the astute Sidonie wanted to
secure the sympathy and alliance of the British people by
exhibiting the boy king.

"And here," squealed Wiggins, "is the grandest piece of publicity
that's ever been pulled.  Bessie, you and Tom and Terry go to
London.  I'll stay out of it, so they won't smell a mice.  Clapham,
our London agent, is a smart publicity grabber, anyway.  You fix
it, somehow, so Terry and this King Maximilian get acquainted.  The
two boy kings, see?  They get photographed together, see?  Besides,
Terry's public know him as a common newsboy, and they won't hardly
be loyal to him as a king unless they see him really mixing up with
the élite, see?"

Mrs. Tait looked doubtful.  Poppy Peaks she knew, and Hollywood was
her oyster, but neither she nor T. Benescoten nor Terry had ever
tackled the dread unknown lands beyond the Atlantic.  But she
brightened and looked resolute as Wiggins cunningly added:

"And this will give you a chance, if you rig it right and the two
kids hit it off together, to get chummy with Queen Sidonie, Bessie,
and maybe you can get her to come to the Peaks as your guest, and
then, believe me, you'll make Garbo and Kate Hepburn look like
deuces wild, very wild!"

"That's not a BAD idea," mused Mrs. Tait.

In the sacred recesses of the Benescoten Tait home, in the Etruscan
breakfast room, where love birds and Himalayan canaries billed and
cooed and caroled in red enameled cages, and the solid-marble
dining table glowed prettily with nineteen dollars' worth of
orchids, the Tait family discussed the invasion of Europe.  They
had just returned from Mr. Granville's office, where they had
accepted Lilac's scenario of "His Majesty, Junior."

"I think," said T. Benescoten, "that if we get held up in London
very long, I'll run over to Paris, if you don't mind, Bessie."

"What do you want to do in Paris?"

"Huh?  Why, I just want to see the city.  You know, get acquainted
with French customs.  Nothing so broadening as travel."

"Then I guess you're going to stay narrow.  Fat chance, you going
to Paris by yourself and drinking a lot of hootch and chasing
around after a lot of wild women.  In fact, come to think of it,
Rabbit, I guess Terry and I can pull this off better if we leave
you home."

"Mother!"  Terry was imploring.  "Please!  I want Father to go
along!"

Bessie faced her two men with her hands on her hips, her jaw out,
and when she stood thus, no one who knew her opposed her, unless he
was looking for death.

T. Benescoten grumbled, Terry wailed, but Bessie glared them down.
Then she stalked to the telephone and ordered the immediate
attendance of a dressmaker, a women's tailor, a shoemaker, a
milliner, a hairdresser, a masseuse, an osteopath, a French tutor
and a Higher Thought lecturer.

"I'm going to Europe and I'm going right," she said.

When, two weeks later, she took the train, she had fourteen new
evening frocks, eight new ensembles, thirty-seven new hats, eight
new pairs of snake-skin shoes, a thumb ring of opals, a gold-
mounted dressing bag, and a lovely new calm manner purchased from
the Higher Thought lecturer.

All the way from Poppy Peaks to New York, Terry and his smiling,
his tender mother were hailed by the millions to whom Terry had
become the symbol of joyous yet wistful boyhood.

Wiggins had generously let the press of each city and town through
which they would pass know just when the King of Boy Comedians
would arrive, and at every stop Terry was dragged, wailing, to bow
and smile his famous Little Lord Fauntleroy smile at the cheering
gangs.

The horror of facing the staring eyes, the horror of trying to look
superhuman for the benefit of these gloating worshipers, while he
felt within like a lonely and scared little boy, so grew on Terry
that it was only his mother's raging, only the fury of Mr. Abraham
Hamilton Granville and the coaxing of Wiggins, that would draw
Terry out of his safe drawing room to the platform.

Despite a certain apprehension about the perils of the deep,
despite a slight worry as to how he would talk to King Maximilian--
who was, said the papers, to arrive in London one day before the
Taits were due--Terry was delighted when Wiggins and Granville had
left them, when the steamer had snarled its way out to sea, and he
could hide in a corner of the S. S. Megalomaniac's royal suite.

He slept for sixteen hours, then, and even the indomitable Bessie
Tait slept, while the S. S. Megalomaniac thrust out to sea, and
expectant Europe awaited them as it awaited the other royal family
from Slovaria.



Aside from gently persuading Terry to be the star in the ship's
concert, at which he recited "The Shooting of Dan McGrew" and
"Gunga Din," and gave imitations of Napoleon and a sitting hen;
aside from permitting him to be photographed by every passenger
aboard, and lovingly insisting that he wear a new costume every
afternoon--including the polo costume, the baseball suit, the Eton
suit with top hat, and the Fauntleroy black velvet with lace
collar--aside from these lighter diversions, Bessie gave Terry a
rest on the crossing.  He must be saved to overwhelm London,
Britain, and Queen Sidonie.

Bessie was disappointed in landing at Southampton when she saw no
crowd hysterical with desire to worship the King of Boy Comedians.

In fact, no one was awaiting them save Mr. Percival S. F. Clapham,
press agent and secretary to the chairman of the Anglo-Jupiter Film
Distributing Corporation, which acted as missionary in introducing
the Terrytaits to Britain.

Mr. Clapham greeted Bessie and Terry in what he considered
American:  "Pleased to meet you!  At your service, folks, as long
as you're here."

"Where's the crowd?" demanded Bessie.

"They, uh--Southampton is a bit indifferent to Americans, you might
say."

Bessie and Clapham looked at each other with no great affection.
The international brotherhood was not working out; the hands across
the sea were growing cold; and when the three of them were settled
in a railway compartment, Bessie demanded crisply:

"Terry and I can't waste a lot of time.  I don't want to hustle
you, but have you fixed it up yet for Terry to meet this kid king
and the quince?"

"The QUINCE?"

"Good heavens!  The queen!  Sidonie!"

"But--the QUINCE!  Really!  Oh, I see!  The queen!  Of course.  I
see.  No, I'm sorry; not quite arranged yet."

"They've arrived?"

"Oh, yes, quite.  Splendid reception.  The young king the darling
of London."

"Well, all right; then Terry and I can go right up and call on 'em.
I expect they've seen a lot of his pictures.  If you haven't made a
date for us, I guess we'd better just send in our cards.  Or had we
better phone?  Where they staying?"

"They're at the Picardie Hotel, because of being in mourning.  This
is an unofficial visit.  And really, my dear lady, it would be
quite impossible for you even to try to call on His Young Majesty
and Queen Sidonie!  It simply isn't done, d'you see?  It isn't
DONE!  You must make application to your ambassador, who will
present the request to the British foreign office, who will
communicate with the Slovarian foreign office, who will determine
whether or not they care to submit the request to Queen Sidonie's
secretary, who may care to bring the matter to Her Majesty's
attention, at which time--"

"At which time," remarked Mrs. T. Benescoten Tait, "hell will have
frozen over a second time.  Now listen!  I'm not much up on meeting
queens, but I guess I'm about as chummy with the royalty as you
are!  Now listen--"

Mr. Clapham's native ruddiness paled as he heard the subversive,
the almost sacrilegious plans of Bessie Tait.

"My dear madame, we are all of us eager to help you," he implored,
"but really, you know, a king is a king!"

She looked at Terry.  "You bet," she observed.  "And a king's
mother is a queen.  You bet!"

Which profound and mysterious statement puzzled Mr. Clapham until
the train drew in at Waterloo.

There were five reporters and a group of thirty or forty admirers,
very juvenile, to greet them.  The most respectable Mr. Turner,
chairman of the Anglo-Jupiter Corporation and boss of Mr. Clapham,
met them with his car.

"Shall we go right to the Picardie, or kind of parade through
London first?" demanded Bessie.

"Oh!  The Picardie!"

"Why, sure!  That's where King Maximilian and his ma are staying,
isn't it?  It's the swellest hotel in town, isn't it?"

"Oh, yes, quite!"  Mr. Turner looked agitated, as he fretted:  "But
I say!  A lady traveling alone, with a boy, couldn't go to the
Picardie!  People might think it a bit fast!  I've taken a suite
for you at Garborough's Hotel--most respectable family hotel."

"When was it built?"

"Built?  Built?  When was it built?  Good heavens, I don't know,
madame.  I should suppose about 1840."

"Well, that's all I want to know.  But go ahead."

Mr. Turner's car left the station to a slight rustle of cheering
from Terry's youthful admirers and to earnest questions from the
reporters as to how many cocktails American boys of ten usually
consume before dinner.  But after that, there was no sign that
London knew it was entertaining another king.

Fog packed in about them.  The sooty house fronts disappeared in
saffron-gray.  The roar of Trafalgar Square seemed louder, more
menacing, than Los Angeles or even New York.  Bessie thrust out her
hand with a gesture of timid affection which she rarely used toward
that rare and golden goose, Terry.

The living room of their suite at Garborough's Hotel was brown and
dingy.  To Bessie, accustomed to hotel rooms the size of a railroad
terminal, the room was shockingly small.  It was but little bigger
than the entire cottage she had occupied four years before.

She sniffed.  And quite rightly.

And the bedrooms had wardrobes instead of proper closets.

She sniffed again.  She rang for the room waiter.

"Dry Martini," said Bessie.

"Eek?" gasped the room waiter.

"Dry Martini!  Cocktail!  Licker!" snarled Bessie.

"I beg pardon, madame, but we do not serve cocktails."

"You don't--"  In the hurt astonishment of it Bessie sat down,
hard.  "Say, what kind of a dump is this?  What kind of a bunch do
you get here?"

"His Grace, the Duke of Ightham, has been coming here for sixty
years."

"Ever since you were a boy of forty!  All right, bring me a
highball."

"A high ball, madame?"

"A highball!  A whisky and soda!  A lightning and cloudburst!"

"Very well, madame."

After the waiter's stately exit, Bessie whimpered, "And they said
I'd like these old ruins!"

For the moment she looked beaten.  "Maybe it ain't going to be as
easy to be buddies with Maximilian and Sidonie as I thought.  I
wish I'd brought old Rabbit!"  Her depression vanished; she sprang
up like a war horse.  "How I'd bawl him out!  Come on, Bess!
Here's where we show this old run-down Europe what an honest-to-
goodness American lady can do!"

They had arrived at Garborough's at three of the afternoon.  At
five, in a black velvet costume which made her look like a vamp--as
far up as her chin--Bessie was stalking into the lobby of the Hotel
Picardie.

The reception clerk at Garborough's had been a stringy young woman
in black alpaca and a state of disapproval, but at the Picardie he
was a young Spanish count in a morning coat.

"I want," she said, "the best suite you have."

"Certainly, madame; at once."

The clerk leaped into action and brought out from a glass-enclosed
holy of holies an assistant manager who was more dapperly
mustached, more sleekly frock-coated, more soapily attentive than
himself.

"May I inquire how large a suite Madame would desire?  And--uh--is
Madame's husband with Madame?"

"No.  I'm the mother of Terry Tait, the movie, I mean cinema, star.
I'm here with him; just us two.  I'd like a parlor and coupla of
bedrooms and a few private dining rooms.  I guess you need
references here."  For a second Bessie again sounded a little
hopeless.  "Probably if you called up the American ambassador he
would know about us."

"Oh, no, madame; of course we are familiar with the pictures of
Master Tait.  May I show you some suites?"

The first suite that he showed was almost as large, it had almost
as much gilt, paneling, omelet-marble table tops, telephone
extensions, water taps and Persian rugs as a hotel in Spokane,
Schenectady, or St. Petersburg, Florida.

"This is more like it.  But look here, I heard somewhere that Queen
Sidonie and her boy are staying here."

"Yes, quite so, madame."

"Well, look: I'd like to be on their floor."

"Sorry, madame, but that is impossible.  We have reserved the
entire floor for Their Majesties and their suite."

"But there must be some rooms empty on it."

"Sorry, madame, but that is quite impossible.  The police would be
very nasty if we even attempted such a thing."

Bessie unhappily recalled the days when she had first gone to
Hollywood with Terry and tried to persuade a castiron-faced guard
to let them through to the casting director.  Not since then had
anyone spoken to her so firmly.  It was a dejected Bessie Tait from
Mechanicville who besought, "Well, then, I'd like to be on the
floor right above them or below them.  I'll make it worth your
while, manager.  Oh, I know I can't bribe you, but I don't like to
bother anybody without I pay for their trouble, and it would be
worth ten of your pounds, or whatever you callum, to have a nice
suite just above Their Majesties."  The assistant manager
hesitated.  From her gold-link purse Bessie drew out the edge of a
ten-pound note.  At that beautiful sight the assistant manager
sighed, and murmured respectfully, "I'll see what can be done,
madame."

Ten minutes later Bessie had a voluptuous suite guaranteed to be
just above that of Queen Sidonie.



Someone had informed Bessie Tait that English people dined as late
as eight in the evening.  It scarcely seemed possible.  But, "I'll
try anything once," said Bessie.

At eight, she sat in a corner of the Renaissance Salon of the Hotel
Picardie, in a striking white tulle frock with gold sequins, and
with her was Master Tait, in full evening clothes.

She noticed that the other guests stared at him considerably.

"They know who we are!" she rejoiced, as she picked up the menu.
It was in French, but if the supercilious captain of waiters
expected the American lady not to understand French, he was
mistaken, for in eighteen lessons at Poppy Peaks she had learned
not only the vocabulary of food but also the French for "I should
like to take a horseback ride on a horse tomorrow," "How much costs
a hat of this fashion?" and "Where obtains one the tickets of the
first class for Holland?"

She said rapidly to the captain, "Donnyma deh pottage German one
order crevettes and one wheats, deh rosbifs, pom de terres, and
some poissons--no, pois--and deh fois ice cream and hustle it will
you, please?"

"Perfaitment!" said the French captain and, continuing in his
delightful native tongue, he commanded a waiter, "Jetz mach'
schnell, du, Otto!"

At nine, Bessie commanded again the presence of the assistant
manager who had found her suite.

"I want you," she suggested, "to get me some good English servants.
First I want a valet for my son.  I want Terry should have a high-
class English valet--and I don't want none that talks bad English,
neither."

"Certainly, madame."

"And I want a maid that can fix my hair."

"Certainly, madame."

"And then I want a refined lady secretary."

"Refined?"

"Yes, she's gotta be refined.  I never could stand dames that
aren't refined."

"I know a young lady, madame, Miss Tingle, the daughter of a most
worthy Low Church clergyman, and formerly secretary to Lady
Frisbie."

"Lady Frisbie?  Oh, in the nobility?"

"Why--uh--practically.  Her husband, Sir Edward Frisbie, was a
linen draper, and mayor of Bournemouth.  Oh, yes, you'll find Miss
Tingle most refined."

"Grand!  That's what I'm always telling these roughnecks in
Hollywood--like when they wanted Terry to play a comic part, bell
boy in a harem--'No, sir,' I said, 'Terry's got a refined father
and mother, and he'll be refined himself or I'll bust his head!'
Well, shoot in your valet and maid and Miss Tingle--have 'em here
by noon."

The assistant manager promised.  After his going, Bessie received
Mr. Turner and Mr. Clapham of the Anglo-Jupiter Corporation.

"We have decided--" said Mr. Clapham gently.

"Yes, we have quite decided," said Mr. Turner with firmness.

"--that it would be indiscreet for you to seek an audience with
King Maximilian at all."

"Oh, you have!" murmured Bessie.  "It's nice to have things decided
for you."

"Yes, we hoped you would be pleased.  We have, in fact, gone into
the matter most thoroughly.  I rang up a gentleman connected with
the press, and he assured me that the proper way would be for you
to apply to your ambassador, and that doubtless the matter could be
arranged in a year or two--doubtless you would have to go to
Slovaria."

"Well, that's splendid.  Just a year or two!  That's fine!  Mighty
kind of you."

"So pleased to do any little thing that I can.  Now Mr. Turner and
I have talked it over, and it seems to both of us that it would be
better to have a little subtler publicity.  So if you care to
have him do so, your son will address the Lads' Brigade of St.
Crispin's, Golder's Green, next Thursday evening--the papers will
give several paragraphs to this interesting occasion.  And then--I
do a bit in the literary way, you know--I have ventured to write an
interview with you which I hope to have used by one of the papers.
It goes as follows:

"'Well, I swow!  Say, dod gast my cats, this yere is by gosh all
whillikens one big burg,' was the first remark of Mrs. Tait, mother
of the well-known juvenile cinema star, Terry Tait, upon arrival in
London yesterday.  'Yes-sir-ree-bob,' she continued, 'out thar in
the broad bosom of the Golden West, out where the handclasp grows a
little warmer, we get some mighty cute burgs, but nothing like this
yere ant heap.'"

"Isn't that nice?" sighed Bessie.  "And that's the American
language you've written it in, isn't it?"

"Yes.  I'm often taken for an American when I wish."

"I'm sure you must be."

Left alone by Turner and Clapham, with the promise that within a
few days they would arrange other feats of publicity at least equal
to the chance to address the Lads' Brigade of Golder's Green,
Bessie sat down and sighed.  But the next morning she resolutely
marched into Terry's modest 24 x 42 bedroom, where he was reading
Treasure Island, and she ordered, "Come on, son; we're going out
and buy the town.  Toys."

"I don't want any toys.  I hate toys!"

"You heard what I said!  Think I'm going to have a lot of kings
dropping into your room and seeing you without a lot of swell
toys?"

"But Mother, I'd rather have books."

"Say, if you keep on like this, you'll turn out nothing but an
author working for one-fifty a week.  Books never did nobody no
good.  Come on!"

By suggestion of the concierge, they took a taxi for an enormous
Toy Bazaar on Oxford Street.  Bessie firmly bought for Terry an
electric train, an electric Derby game, a portable chemical
laboratory, a set of boxing gloves, and a choice article in the way
of a model of the Colosseum in which electric lions devoured
electric Early Christians.

"There!  I bet none of these boy kings has got a better set of toys
than that!" remarked Bessie.

As they emerged from the Toy Bazaar, Terry saw, next to it, an
animal shop.

Ever since they had left Poppy Peaks, Terry had mourned for the
disgraceful mongrel which the English quarantine regulations had
compelled him to leave at home, and he cried now, "Oh, Mother, I
want a dog!"

"If I get you one, will you play nicely with the electric toys?"

"I'll try; honestly I will."

"And will you address these Lad Brigands or whatever it is in this
Golden Green or wherever it is?  I'll have this bird Clapham write
your speech."

"Yes.  But a jolly dog!"

"I wish," said Bessie, in her most refined way, as they entered the
animal shop, "to look at a line of dogs.  What have you got good
today?"

"This, madame, is a very superior animal."  And the clerk brought
out an object as thin as paper, as long as Saturday morning, as
gloomy as a cameraman.  "This is an Imperial Russian wolfhound, a
genuine borzoi--you will recognize the typical borzoi touch,
madame--it's brother of a hound which we sold just yesterday to the
Earl of Tweepers for his daughter, Lady Ann--no doubt you know her
ladyship, madame."

"H-how much?" faltered Bessie.

"To close out this line, madame, we should be willing to let you
have this animal for a hundred guineas."

The inner, the still Mechanicvillized Bessie Tait was calculating,
"Great grief--that's five hundred bucks for a pooch!" but the
outer, the newly refined Mrs. T. Benescoten Tait was remarking
evenly, "Rather a lot, but I might consider--Does it please you,
Terry?"

She could keep up the strain of refinement no longer; and most
briskly, much more happily, she remarked to the clerk, "This is my
son, Terry Tait.  You've probably seen him in the movies.  They
call him the King of Boy Comedians."

"Oh, Mother, please!" protested Terry, but the clerk was
trumpeting, "Oh, yes, madame.  We are honored in being allowed to
serve you."

And with that the canine blotter would have been sold, but for one
accident.  Terry sighed, "Mother, I don't like him."

"But DARling, this is the kind of dog that all nobility get their
pictures taken with.  But if you don't like him--"

While Bessie grew momently more impatient, Terry was offered, and
declined, such delightful pets as a Pekingese that looked like a
misanthropic bug and an Airedale like a rolled-up doormat.  Then he
stopped before a cage and, his hands clasped in ecstasy, exulted,
"Oh, there's the dog I want!"

The clerk looked shocked; Bessie, seeing his expression, looked
shockeder.

Terry's choice was a canine social error.  He was, probably, a
cross between a police dog and a collie, with a little Scotch
terrier and a trace of cocker spaniel.  He had bright eyes, a wide
and foolish mouth, and paws so enormous that he resembled a pup on
snowshoes.  And he had none of the dignity and aloof tolerance of
the pedigreed dogs whom Terry had rejected; he laughed at them and
wagged at them and barked an ill-bred joyful bark.

"That," objected the clerk, "is a mongrel, I'm afraid.  We are
exhibiting him only out of deference to the widow of a country
customer.  I really shouldn't care to recommend him."

"But he's a sweet dog!" wailed Terry.  "He's the one I want!"

"Very well, then, my fine young gentleman, you get no dog at all,
if you're going to be so dog-gone COMMON!" raged Bessie, and she
dragged the protesting Terry from the shop and hastened to the
Hotel Picardie.



Bessie telephoned to those unseen powers that somewhere in the
mysterious heart of every hotel regulate all human destinies, "Will
you please send up a bell boy at once?"

"A bell boy?  Oh, a page!"

"Well, whatever you want to call him."

There appeared at her suite a small boy whom she immediately longed
to put on the stage.  He was red-headed, freckle-faced, and he
carried his snub nose high and cockily.  He wore a skin-tight blue
uniform with a row of brass buttons incredibly close together, and
on the corner of his head rode an impudent pill-box cap of
soldierly scarlet.

"Yes, madame?"  He was obviously trying not to grin, in pure good
fellowship, and when Terry grinned, the page's cockney mug was
wreathed with smiling.

"What is your name?" demanded Bessie.

"Bundock, madame."

"Heavens, you can't call a person Bundock!  What are you called at
home?"

"Ginger, madame."

"Well, Ginger, this is my son, Master Terry Tait, the movie--the
cinema star."

"Oh, madame, we were told below that Master Tait was 'ere, but I
didn't know I'd 'ave the pleasure of seeing him!  I'm familiar with
Master Tait in the pictures, if I may say so, madame."

"All right.  Play."

"I beg your pardon?"

"I said play.  Play!  You are to play with Master Terry."

While Ginger looked dazed, she led the two boys into Terry's
bedroom, pointed an imperial forefinger at the new toys which she
had brought home in the taxicab, and loftily left them.

"Gosh, I think it's the limit that this playing business is wished
onto you, too!" sighed Terry.  "I guess she'll want us to play with
the electric train.  Do you mind playing with an electric train?"

"I've never before 'ad the opportunity, sir."

"Oh, golly, don't call me 'sir.'"

"Very well, sir."

"What did you play with at home?"

"Well, sir--"

"Terry!  Not sir!"

"Well, Master Terry, sir, I 'ad a very nice cricket bat that my
uncle 'Ennery made for me, and a wagon made out of a Bass' Ale box,
sir, but it didn't go so very well, sir--permit me!"

Terry had begun to open the case containing the electric train.
Ginger sprang to help him.  As he lifted out an electric
locomotive, a dozen railroad carriages which represented the Flying
Scotsman in miniature, a station on whose platform a tiny station
master waved a flag when the set was connected with the electric-
light socket, a tunnel through a conveniently portable mountain,
and an even more miraculously portable bridge across a mighty tin
river three feet long, Ginger muttered, "I'll be jiggered."

"Do you like them?" marveled Terry.

"Oh!  LIKE them, sir!"

"Well, you wouldn't if they gave you one every birthday and
Christmas, and you had to run 'em while a bunch of gin-hounds stood
around and watched you and said, 'isn't he cute!'"

But Terry was impressed by the admiration of this obviously
competent Ginger, this fortunate young man who was allowed to wear
brass buttons and live in the joyous informality of kitchens and
linen closets.  Within fifteen minutes, unanimously elected
president and general manager of the Hollywood & Pasadena R. R.,
Terry was excitedly giving orders to the vice president and traffic
manager; trains were darting through tunnels and intelligently
stopping at stations; and once there was a delightful accident in
which the train ran off the curve, to the anguish of sixteen
unfortunate passengers.

"Gee, I do like it when I've got somebody to play with!" marveled
Terry.  "Say, I wish you could see my dog back home.  He's a dandy
dog.  His name is Corn Beef and Cabbage."

"Really, sir?  What breed is 'e?"

"Well, he's kind of an Oklahoma wolfhound, my dad says."

"Oh, yes.  Okaloma wolf'ound.  I've 'eard of that breed, sir.  I
say!  Let's put one of the passengers on the track, and then the
train runs into 'im and we could 'ave a funeral."

"Slick!"



Miss Tingle, the refined lady secretary recommended by the hotel,
had arrived at noon, and had been engaged.

"Can you go to work right now?" demanded Bessie.  "I'm going to
grab off a king!"

"Grab off--a king, madame?"

"Oh, gosh, I don't know why it is!  Back in Hollywood, I thought I
could sling the King's English all right, but in England, seems
like every time I say anything they repeat what I say and register
astonishment!  I guess I'm kind of a lady Buffalo Bill.  Well,
let's get to it.  Now listen."

She explained the scheme for the capture of publicity by making
Terry and King Maximilian chums.

"And just between you and I, I wouldn't kick and holler much if I
got to be buddies with Queen Sidonie.  Of course Terry's publicity
comes first.  I just sacrifice everything to that boy.  But same
time I've seen pictures of Sidonie.  Somehow I just feel (Do you
believe in the Higher Thought?--you know there's a lot of these
instincts and hunches and all like that that you just can't explain
by material explanations)--and somehow I feel that she and I would
be great pals, if we had the chance.  Oh, dear!"

Bessie sighed the gentle sigh of a self-immolating mother.

"It's just fierce the way I've had to submerge my own personality
for my husband and son.  But I guess unselfishness never goes
unrewarded.  So look.  We'll just write her a little letter and
send it down by hand.  Of course I want to enclose a card, so's
she'll know whom I am.  Which of these cards would do the trick
better, do you think?"

One of the two cards was a highly restrained document: merely "Mrs.
T. Benescoten Tait," in engraved script.  But the other card was
baroque.  It was impressive.  It announced:


                   Mr. & Mrs. T. Benescoten Tait
                          Pop and Mom of
                            TERRY TAIT
                     The King of Boy Comedians
         Star of "Kids Is Kids," "Wee Waifs o' Dockland,"
                   "A Child of the Midnight," etc.
         Castello Marino,                Poppy Peaks, Cal.


It was embossed in red, blue, silver, and canary-yellow, and while
it was slightly smaller than a motor-license plate, it was much
more striking.

"Now maybe this colored one ain't as society as the other, but
don't you think Her Majesty would be more likely to notice it?"
said Bessie anxiously.

Miss Tingle was terrified yet fascinated.  "I've never," she
gasped, "had the privilege of communicating with a queen, but if I
may say so, I fancy the plainer card would be more suitable,
madame."

"Oh, I suppose so.  But the big card cost a lot of money.  Well,
now, will you take dictation on a letter?  I suppose the old gal
reads English?"

"Oh, I understand that Their Majesties write and speak six
languages."

"Well, I'd be satisfied with one.  When I get back home I'm going
to hire some Britisher to learn me to talk snooty.  Well, here
goes.  Take this down:


"Her Majesty, the Queen of Slovaria.

"Dear Madame:

"I guess you will be surprised at receiving this letter from a
total stranger, but I am a neighbor of yours, having the suite
right above yours here in the hotel.  And probably you have heard
of my son, Mr. Terry Tait, the well-known boy actor in the movies--
no, make that cinema, Miss Tingle--and I hope that maybe your boy,
King Maximilian, has seen him in some of his celebrated films, such
as 'Please Buy a Paper' or 'Give Me a Penny, Mister.'

"He is here with me in London, and every hour he says to me, 'Ma,
I'm just crazy to meet this boy king, Maximilian, he being my own
age, which is ten, etc.'

"As your boy is a king, and as folks in many lands have been kind
enough to call Terry the King of Boy Actors, I thought maybe it
would be nice if the two could get together and compare notes, etc.
I would be very pleased to give him and you lunch or tea or dinner
or a cocktail or whatever would be convenient for you and though of
course Terry has many dates, having to lecture to the Lads'
Brigade, etc., we would try to keep any date that you might set.

"But I am afraid we'll have to make it in the next few days, as
Terry's Public in Paris is begging for him.

"So if you could just ring me up here in Suite Five-B any time
that's handy for you, we can arrange details, etc.

"Hoping you are in the best of health, I am Yours sincerely.


"As soon as you get that typed--I've had 'em bring up a machine and
stick it in my bedroom--get a bell boy to hustle it right down to
Siddy's suite.  We gotta get action.  Shoot!"

And Bessie scampered happily out to the foyer to hire a maid, and
to engage for Terry a lugubrious valet.

His name was Humberstone.  He had, of course, never served anyone
of lesser degree than a duke, and he would require two pounds extra
a week to associate with Americans.  He got it.  He was worth it.
Even a boy king from Slovaria would be impressed by Humberstone's
egg-shaped head.

Bessie proudly let this four-pounds-a-week worth of noble valet
into the bedroom.  On the floor, extremely linty, sat two small
boys whom Humberstone eyed with malevolence.  Ginger quaked.  Terry
looked irritated.

"Sonny dear, this is your new valet," crooned Bessie, with a
maternal sweetness alarming to her well-trained son.

Humberstone eyed the railwaymen with the eye of an ogre who liked
little boys nicely fried, with onion sauce.  Under that smug glare,
the first excited gayety that Terry had shown these many weeks died
out.

"Oh, I don't need a valet, Mother!"

"And who, Master Smarty, do you think is going to look out for your
clothes?  You certainly don't expect me to, I hope!  Humberstone,
you can sleep here in this dressing room.  Now get busy and press
Master Terry's clothes."

When Humberstone had gone out with an armful of clothes and when
Bessie had left them, the two playmates sat on a couch, too
dispirited to go on happily wrecking trains.

"Gee, that's fierce, that man-eating valet," confided Terry.

"Right you are.  'E's 'orrible," said his friend Ginger.

"He's a big stiff!"

"'E is that!  'E's an old buffins."

"It's fierce, Ginger.  We won't stand it!"

"It is that, Terry.  We won't!"

"We'll run away.  To Poppy Peaks!"

"Is that your ranch?"

Now when Terry comes to Heaven's gate and has to explain to Saint
Peter the extreme untruth of what he said about bears and the wild
free life of the ranches, let us trust that the wise old saint will
understand that Terry had long been overadmired for silly things
like having cherubic lips and silky hair, and never been admired
for the proper things, such as the ability to ride mustangs, lasso
steers and shoot Indians, which, unquestionably, he would have
demonstrated if only he had ever been nearer a ranch than Main
Street, Los Angeles.

"Yes, sure, it's our ranch.  Gee, I'm going to get Mother to invite
you there.  We live in a big log cabin, and every night, gee, you
can hear the grizzly bears howling!"

"My word!  I say, did you ever shoot a grizzly bear?"

"Oh, not awful many, but couple of times."

"Tell me about it.  Were you with Will Rogers or Hoot Gibson?"

"Both of them.  There was Bill and Hoot and Doug Fairbanks and--uh--
and there was Will Beebe, the nachalist, and we all went up
camping in the--uh--in the Little Bighorn Valley--that's on our
ranch, Poppy Peaks--and one night I was sleeping out in the
sagebrush, all rolled up in my blankets, and I woke up and I heard
something going snuffle-snuffle-snuffle, and I looked up and there
was a great, big, tall, huge figger--"

"My 'at!"

"--just like a great, big, enormous man, only twict as big, and
like he had an awful' thick fur coat, and gee, I was scared, but I
reached out my hand and I grabbed my dad's rifle, and I aimed--I
just took a long careful aim--"

"My word!"

"--and I let her go, bang! and the bear he fell--no, at first he
didn't fall right down dead, but he kind of staggered like he was
making for me--"

"My aunt!"

"--but my shot'd woke up everybody, and Harold Lloyd, no, Richard
Bart'lemess it was--he grabbed up his gun and he shot and the bear
fell down right beside me, with its awful hot breath stirring my
hair, and then it just flopped a couple of times and bing! it was
dead!"

"My!"

"But I bet you've had some adventures, Ginger.  Don't all English
kids go to sea as cabin boys?"

"Well, me, I never 'ad time to, not exactly.  But me uncle, Uncle
'Ennery Bundock, now there's a man, Terry, that's after your own
'eart.  Adventures?  Why, Uncle 'Ennery 'as 'ad more adventures
than the Prince of Wales!  'E was a cabin boy, 'e was!  Why, one
time 'e was out in the South Seas and the ship 'e was on was
wrecked, it was, it ran into a w'ale, a monstrous big w'ale, and it
busted the forward keelson, and that wessel, it began to sink
immejitly, oh, something shocking, and me uncle swam ashore, four
miles it was, through them seas simply infected with sharks, and 'e
come ashore, only me own age, twelve, 'e was then, but many's the
time 'e's told me, six foot 'e stood in 'is stocking feet.

"And there on shore was a fee-rocious band of nekked savages but--
well, 'e 'ad a burning glass in 'is clothes, and 'e 'eld it up, and
them poor ignorant savages, they didn't know what it was, and then
'e acted like 'e didn't even see 'em, and 'e stuck that burning
glass over a pile of driftwood, and the wood caught fire, and them
savages all gave one 'orrible shriek, and they all ran away, and so
that's 'ow 'e got to be their king."

"Is he still their king?"

"'Im?  Uncle 'Ennery?  No fear!  'E 'ad other things to do, 'e 'ad,
and when 'e got tired of being king, 'e up and made 'isself a canoe
out of a log and sailed away and--and 'e stood for Parliament in
the Sandwich Islands!"

"Tell me some more!" cried Terry.

But their ardor was interrupted by the return of the formidable
Humberstone, and then Bessie whisked in with, "You can go now,
Ginger.  Terry!  Wash your hands.  Lunch."

"Mother!  I want Ginger to come play with me every day!"

"Well, perhaps; we'll see.  Now be snappy.  This afternoon we
might--we might have some important visitors.  Most important!"

For two days Bessie awaited a reply to her note to Queen Sidonie,
but from the royal fastnesses she had no murmur.

London mildly discovered that the King of Boy Comedians was in
town.  A special writer from a newspaper which had been
Americanized came to interview Terry on the contrasting spiritual
values of baseball vs. cricket, his favorite poem, and the cooking
of Brussels sprouts.

He addressed the Lads' Brigade, and that was nothing to write
about.  And he received six hundred and eighteen letters from
people who were willing to let him pay for their mortgages and
their surgical operations.

But for most of the two days he sneaked into corners and tried to
look inconspicuous while, in the living room of the suite, Bessie
stalked and glared, and in his bedroom Humberstone the valet glared
and stalked.  Ginger was summoned to play, but Bessie so raged at
their noise that the two infants made a pirates' den behind Terry's
bed, where Ginger chronicled his uncle 'Ennery Bundock's adventures
as steward and bartender to a celebrated arctic expedition--"'Bring
me a whisky-soda, me man,' says Sir John Peary, and Uncle 'Ennery
brings it, and standing there Sir John drinks a toast to the North
Pole, and 'e says to me uncle, ''Ennery, we'd never 've discovered
it but for your splendid service'"--and 'Ennery's astonishing
experiences during the Great War when, as a British spy, he reached
the Imperial Palace in Berlin and talked with the Kaiser, who, such
was Uncle 'Ennery's cunning, took him for a Turkish ally.

If anything more than Ginger's freckled grin had been needed to
make Terry adore him, it would have been the privilege of meeting
the relative of so spirited a hero as Uncle 'Ennery Bundock.

With Terry in Ginger's care, Bessie was able to give herself up
whole-heartedly to worrying about failure to receive an answer from
Queen Sidonie, to worrying about what Rabbit might be doing by his
lone wicked self in Hollywood, and to being manicured, massaged,
dress-fitted, hat-fitted, and generally enjoying herself.  On the
afternoon of the second day, she fretted only a little when Terry,
with Ginger, seemed to be missing.  But when they had been missing
for two hours, she realized with sudden horror that Terry was lost
in the wilds.

It was some comfort to think that there would be frontpage stories
even in the London papers, which have their first pages on the
third page, but she did hope he wouldn't be late for dinner.  With
all the devotion of a mother and the efficiency of a true American,
she telephoned first to the newspapers and second to Scotland Yard.

Just as the happy reporters and cameramen arrived, she heard a
slight squealing back in Terry's room and dashed out to find that
Terry had sheepishly sneaked in the back way, accompanied by a yet
more sheepish Ginger and by a very sheep of sheeps--a large
irregular-shaped dog of a predominating hue of brown, streaked and
striped and spotted with black, white, yellow, and plain dirt.  He
had a broad back, built for boys to ride upon, a tail that wagged
foolishly, and an eye that looked with fond ecstasy upon the two
boys, but with alarm upon the ineffable Humberstone.

"Good heavens!" wailed Bessie.  "That's that horrible animal I told
you you couldn't have!"

"Oh, no, Mother!  THAT"--with vast scorn--"was just a collie-
police-dog, with terrier blood, but this is a pure-bred Margate
Wader.  The man SAID so!  And his name is Josephus.  The dog's.
And the man wanted to charge me ten shillings, but Ginger got him
for me for eighteen-pence and that autographed picture of Fred
Stone."

"Oh," groaned Bessie, "to think that I should have a son that's
common!  It's funny, but you're just like your father.  But I
haven't got time to talk about that now.  Listen!  The reporters
are here!  You were lost!  You gotta tell 'em--a man tried to
kidnap you, but Ginger--he'd happened to see you once in the hotel,
and of course he knew who you were, and he was coming along, and he
persuaded you not to go with this man--he looked like a Bolshevik.
Get that?  Snappy now!"

With maternal pride, she heard Terry admit to the reporters how
reckless he had been in wandering through the foggy city.  Ginger,
called on for further details, loyally brought in his uncle 'Ennery
Bundock--it seemed that Uncle 'Ennery Bundock had once served in
the Czar's Imperial Guard, and was an authority on Bolsheviks; it
was he who had recognized the Soviet spy and rescued Terry.

The reporters raised their eyebrows and went away, most politely.
Next morning, Bessie was up at seven, clamoring for all the
newspapers.  Terry's awful escape was mentioned in only one of
them, in the column of Mr. Swannen Haffer:


After, so it is asserted, frequently associating with gunmen and
like underworld characters of San Francisco, Bangor, and other
western cities of the United States, Terence Tate, the American boy
cinema actor, discovered that Brighter London is delightfully
beginning to realize the perils of his native land.  Strolling from
his hotel yesterday, Master Tate, whose mother has interestingly
compared his art to that of Sir Henry Irving, Sir Johnston Forbes-
Robertson, and Eleonora Duse, contrived so thoroughly to lose
himself in the trackless wilds of Pall Mall that it was necessary
to send out an expedition of hotel servants, equipped with
wireless, ice axes, and tinned walrus meat, to discover and rescue
him.

Master Tate, with that shrewd perception which has so endeared all
Yankee filmaturgy to the naïve British heart, discovered a band of
red Indians encamped in front of the Carlton Club, and a band of
Bolshevik spies, disguised as bishops but concealing bombs under
their aprons, lurking on the roof of the Atheneum.  Master Tate's
horrendous discoveries have been conveyed to Scotland Yard, and it
is to be hoped that thanks to the young hero--who is only six years
old; in fact, so young that his mother permits him to have only
three motor cars--London will presently be made almost as safe as
his native Chicago.


Bessie spoke for half an hour without stopping.  It did not soothe
her particularly to find, in every newspaper, a two-column account
of the children's party given by the little Princess Elizabeth,
with King Maximilian of Slovaria as honor guest, and the
announcement that within a week Sidonie and Maximilian were to
accompany the British Royal Family to Sandringham Hall, in Norfolk.

The house party, said the announcement, would be informal, and
limited to intimate friends of the Family.

Somehow--she could not explain why--that seemed to Bessie Tait, of
Poppy Peaks, to shut her out more than any account of a grand
public entertainment.

A week!  She was desperate.

And if the British press wasn't to be roused by Terry's ghastly
kidnaping, what could a lady do?  All day she galloped up and down
her suite, raging at her maid, at Humberstone, even at Miss Tingle,
the refined lady secretary.  The cheerful sounds of Terry, Ginger,
and Josephus the Margate Wader, from Terry's room, the sound of
yelps and giggles and tremendous chasings after a tennis ball,
irritated her the more; made her forget the small voice within her
that whispered, "Now be careful, Bess--don't monkey with the buzz
saw."

"Oh, shut up!" she said to the alarmed mentor and, sending Miss
Tingle to buy stationery which she didn't need, the maid to buy
hair nets which she never used, and Humberstone to go back to his
room and continue doing nothing save look impressive, she dashed to
the telephone and snarled, "I want to speak to Suite Four-B."

"I'm sorry, madame, but I can't connect you with that apartment.
It's taken by the Queen of Slovaria."

"Good Lord, don't you suppose I know that?  The Queen and I are
great friends."

"Very sorry, madame, but I have my orders.  I can connect you with
the bureau of Count Elopatak, Her Majesty's equerry."

Bessie was puzzled as to why one should be connected telephonically
with a bureau, an object which to her was firmly associated with
Mr. Rabbit Tait's collars and pink silk undergarments, and equally
puzzled as to what an equerry did for a living.  "Sounds like a
horse--and at that, I guess a horse is about the only bird
connected with Her Maj that I'm going to get to talk to," she
reflected tragically, but she said meekly, "Very well, I'll speak
to his countship."

She then spoke in turn, so far as she could later make out, with an
American who was breeches buyer for Eglantine, Katz and Kominsky,
of Cleveland, Ohio, and who seemed to have no connection whatever
with the Royal House of Slovaria; with an Englishwoman who appeared
to be the stenographer to the secretary of the equerry; to the
secretary of the equerry; to an indignant Englishman who asserted
that he was no Slovarian equerry but, on the contrary, a coffee
planter from British Guiana; to Count Elopatak, and at last to a
man with a swart and bearded voice who admitted to being the
secretary of Queen Sidonie.

But he didn't seem to care for telephoning.  He kept making sounds
as though he were about to hang up, and Bessie held him only by a
string of such ejaculations as, "Now you must get this clear!" and
"This is very important!"

Hadn't Her Majesty, Bessie demanded, received the letter from Mrs.
T. Benescoten Tait, of California, mother of the celebrated--

Yes, the secretary seemed to remember some such letter but of
course letters from strangers were never considered.

Well, then, she was willing to take the matter up over the phone.

Take up WHAT matter?  There were no matters, thank heaven, which
had to be taken up!

But had they asked His Young Majesty whether he might not like to
meet the celebrated boy--

His Majesty cared to meet no one and really, if Madame would be so
kind, there were innumerable affairs of the most pressing necessity
and--click!

This time Bessie expressed her opinion in a subdued manner.  "But
I'm not licked yet.  I've got an Idea!"

When Mrs. T. Benescoten Tait had an Idea, Hollywood sat up and
looked nervous, but the gray welter of city beyond the windows of
the Hotel Picardie looked strangely indifferent.

"Of course, none of her hired men--equerries or whatever fancy
names they want to call themselves--would understand it, but I'll
bet Sidonie herself would be tickled pink to get some high-class
publicity!  It's just a matter of getting to her and explaining
it," considered Bessie.  "And we'd have such a nice time talking
about our boys.  Well, then, on the job--get past all these darn
watchdogs."

She marched into Terry's bedroom.  She chased Ginger out of the
room, shut Josephus the Margate Wader in Humberstone's room, and
remarked to Terry with a maternal sweetness which caused him to
look alarmed and suspicious, "Come, my little mannie, put on your
Fauntleroy suit; we're going to see Queen Sidonie!"

Now deep and dark and terrible as was Terry's hatred for the polo
costume, it was as love and loyalty compared with his detestation
of the Little Lord Fauntleroy suit, with its velvet jacket, velvet
breeches, buckled slippers and lace collar.  He protested.  He
wailed, while from beyond the door Josephus wailed with him--and
furiously started to chew Humberstone's respectable slippers.

With a considerable drop in tenderness, Bessie snarled, "Now, we'll
have no more out of you!  Good Lord!  I work myself to the bone
trying to give you a chance in life!  I work and slave to have you
meet the real bon ton, like kings and queens, and not a lot of
these Hollywood bums, and then you won't act nice like I tell you
to!  Terry Tait, I haven't punished you for some time, but unless
you put on the nice Fauntleroy suit, and act nice and gentlemanly,
why, I'll just nachly snatch you bald-headed, jhear me?"  In the
case of Mr. Rabbit Benescoten Tait, Terry had seen his mother's
rare ability to snatch people bald-headed and, sobbing slightly, he
took off the honest boy-town tweed suit he was wearing and began to
force himself into the abomination of lace and black velvet.



Out of the door, down the corridor, about to meet a queen--about to
meet the first woman who might prove to be her own equal--marched
Mrs. T. Benescoten Tait.

Bessie had, in a week of London, learned that really cultured and
cosmopolitan people called candy "sweets," called trolley cars
"trams," called hotel clerks "reception clerks," called six bits
"three bob," and, most especially, called an elevator a "lift."
Thus it was no common and uneducated elevator but an exotic lift
that they took, and it was to a lift attendant that Bessie murmured
charmingly, with just a touch of a Mechanicville French accent,
"We'll stop at the catriem étage--oh, how fonny!--I mean the fourt'
floor, please."

"Very sorry, madame, but that floor is reserved.  I am not
permitted to stop there."

"Say, don't you suppose I know it's reserved for the Slovarian
royal party?  It's them I'm going to see!"

The lift attendant had stopped the lift (or elevator or ascenseur)
just below the fourth floor.  He was a bright lift boy of sixty-
five.  He said unhappily, "I'm sorry, madame, but I'm not permitted
to let anyone off on the fourth floor unless they are recognized or
are accompanied by someone from the royal entourage."

"Rats!  I tell you they're expecting me!  Look at this!"

THIS was a pound note.  The lift attendant looked on it
regretfully, but he sighed.  "Very sorry, madame--much as my
position is worth," and shot the lift down to the ground floor.

"All right, then; you can take us back to the fifth floor," said
Bessie.

Terry turned toward their suite, but his mother snapped, "Where do
you think you're going?" and marched him toward the onyx-and-
crystal front staircase from their floor down to the fourth, the
royal floor.

As they elegantly emerged on the sacred corridor, they were
confronted by one of the largest, tallest, most ruddy-faced bobbies
in the entire British police force.  He too was sorry, and he too
explained that he could not let strangers approach Their Majesties.

Bessie wasted no words on so rude a fellow.  She marched upstairs
again.  "If they think they can stop ME!  There's nothing I won't
do for the sake of my poor little son!" she moaned and, grabbing
the poor little son, she marched him to the east end of their
corridor.

Now at the east end Bessie had noted a flight of slate-tread
stairs, presumably intended for servants and as a fire escape.

At the foot of the stairs stood the same bobby whom she had just
met.

"Now then!  'Ave I got to run you in?" he growled.

With one proud glance she marched back upstairs.

For half an hour she cried on her bed, raging at the tyrants who
insulted a mother who was trying to give her son a chance to get
along in the world.  Then she rose, powdered, and stalked into
Terry's room, where he had already changed from the nice Fauntleroy
suit into khaki shirt and shorts.  He sat behind a couch, arguing
with Josephus.

"Now look here, young man, I'm going out, and if you stir one foot
out of this suite, you and me will have a little talk this evening,
jhear me!"

She marched out, singularly like the Fifth Cavalry on the trail of
the Apaches.

Terry telephoned for Ginger.  In blessed quiet and lack of maternal
care, the two small boys and the one large dog became happy again.
Liberally interpreting the boundaries of the suite, which Terry was
not to leave, as including the corridor, they laid out the electric
railway from Edinburgh (opposite Room 597) to South Africa
(overlooking the canyon of the back stairs).

And while they reveled, Bessie was at the American Embassy,
successively failing to see the ambassador, the counselor, the
first and second secretaries, and finally, with indignation at this
neglect of her Rights as an American Citizen, hearing the third
secretary murmur:

"I greatly sympathize with you, but I'm afraid it would be hard to
get the chief to feel that you have been insulted and that the
State Department ought to cable Slovaria.  Suppose some complete
stranger were to come to your studio in Hollywood while Terry was
making the most important scenes of a new picture, and should want
to go right in--would he be admitted?"

"But that's entirely different!  Terry isn't a stranger!"

"But he might be to the Slovarians."

"Well, I've heard a lot about how ignorant these Europeans are, but
you can't make me believe that even the Slovarians haven't heard
about Terry Tait, the King of Boy Comedians!"

The third secretary rose with a manner which was familiar to Bessie
from her first job-hunting days in Los Angeles.  He observed
silkily, "Dreadfully sorry, but I'm afraid we can't do a thing in
this matter.  But if we can help you about passports . . ."

As Bessie walked disconsolately away from the Embassy she groaned,
"I guess the game's up!  We ain't going to meet any queen.  My poor
little boy!  They won't raise him to four grand a week, after all.
And I won't be able to buy that steam yacht! . . .  The dirty
snobs, that care more for red tape than for a mother's heart!  Say,
why wouldn't that make a swell title for Terry's next movie after
'His Majesty, Junior'?  'A Mother's Heart'!"



Terry, Ginger, and Josephus, the managers of the Edinburgh, South
Africa and Peking R. R., were repairing a wreck and gleefully
counting the temporarily dead passengers beside the slaty African
caverns of what would, to unenlightened adult eyes, have seemed the
back stairs.

Up those crevasses crept a small boy, obviously English, a boy with
black hair, a cheery nose of a cocky Irish tilt, and gray flannels.
He was of Terry's age.

"Hello!" he said.

"'Ello yourself," observed Ginger grandly.

"I'm going up to the top floor and I'm going to slide down all the
banisters all the way down," confided the stranger.

"You better be careful on the floor below this.  Some king's got
it.  There's a lot of cops there.  How'd you ever get by 'em?"
demanded Terry.

"I waited till they weren't looking, and slipped past 'em.  Oh, I
say, what a lovely train!"

He seemed a nice lad, and with much cordiality Terry urged,
"Wouldn't you like to play train with us?"

"Oh, I'd love it!" cried the stranger.  "I say, this is ripping!
I've run away from my family.  They want me to go to parties and
have my picture taken."

"Isn't it fierce!" sympathized Terry.

"If you must 'ave your picture taken," Ginger remarked oracularly,
"you just tell your old lady to take you to Gumbridge's, on Great
St. Jever Street, Whitechapel; 'e'll do you 'andsome--six bob a
dozen."

"Oh, thank you very much indeed.  I'll tell my mother.  May I--
would you mind if I started the train just once?"

The new boy was so enthusiastic about the signal system, he so
fervently enjoyed the most sanguinary wrecks, that Ginger and Terry
adopted him as a third musketeer, and Terry urged, "If you like it,
come into my room.  I've got some other things there."

The new boy gazed in awe at the electrical Derby race and the
electrical Colosseum with the lions charmingly devouring Early
Christians.

"I've just never SEEN such things," he sighed.

"What do you play with at home?" asked Terry.

"Why, we live in the country most of the year, and I ride and swim
and play tennis and--and--that's about all.  You see, I have ever
such a stern tutor, and he keeps me at work so much.  But--oh, I
have a bicycle, too!"

Ginger and Terry exchanged glances of pity for their unfortunate
new friend, and Terry said comfortingly, "But still, it must be
slick to ride horseback on these English roads--not get jounced all
to pieces like I do when I ride on the ranch."

"You ride on a ranch?  I THOUGHT you were American!"

"Yes.  I'm in the movies."

The stranger startled them with his scream:  "Now I know!  I knew
you looked familiar!  You're Terry Tait!  I've seen you in the
pictures.  I loved 'em!  Oh, I am so glad to meet you!"

The boys shook hands, while Ginger beamed and Josephus wagged with
appreciation, and Terry said generously, "But you Englishers don't
care for my stuff like they do at home.  I guess I ain't so much
as--"

"But honestly, Terry--if I may call you that?"

"Sure, kid."

"But I'm not English--at least only an eighth English.  I'm
Slovarian."

"With that Slovarian bunch with King Maximilian downstairs?"

"Yes.  I'm Maximilian."

"Oh, go-WAN!  You don't look like a king!  You look like a regular
kid!"

"Blimey!" groaned Ginger, "I believe 'e is the king, Terry!  I seen
'is pictures!"

"Gee," wailed Terry, "and I thought kings always wore tights and
carried swords!"

"I'm frightfully sorry, Terry.  Honestly, I hate being a king!
It's just beastly!  I have to learn six languages, and all about
taxation and diplomacy and history and all those things--and I just
want to play and be let alone!  And they're always trying to
assassinate me!"

"Jiminy!  Honest?" breathed Terry.

"Yes; I've been shot at three times this year, and really, I don't
like it a bit."

"Say, gee, Your Majesty has got to excuse me if I got fresh with
you."

"Oh, please, won't you call me 'Max'?"

"Thunder!  You can't call a king 'Max.'  You call him 'Your
Majesty,' or 'Sire.'"

"No, you don't!  Not in private life."

"Well, gosh, I ought to know!  I've read A Gentleman of France and
a lot like that."

"Well, I ought to know.  I'm a king!"

"But you haven't been a king long!"

"That's so.  But anyway--oh, please call me 'Max.'  Honestly,
Terry, I'm so frightfully pleased to have met you.  I've always
been eager to know you ever since I saw you as the cabin boy in
'The Burning Deck.'  I say!  That was simply ripping where you had
that idea about dropping one end of the hose in the ocean and
putting out the fire whence all but you had fled.  Jove, you must
have led the most perilous life!"

"Oh.  That!  That scene with the hose was taken in the studio.  The
fire wasn't nothing but some oily waste in pails.  No.  I never did
anything dangerous.  Dog-gone it!  My mother won't let me!"

"Oh, Terry!  Look!  When we grow up, and I get to be a REAL king,
and my mother and Sebenéco (he's the prime minister) and Professor
Michelowsky (he's my tutor)--when I'm of age and they can't govern
me any longer, will you be my Commander in Chief?"

"Well, I wouldn't mind, Max."  In a sudden consideration of his own
troubles, it is to be feared that Terry forgot he was addressing a
king.  "Anyway, I'd certainly like to get out of the movies.  You
talk about your troubles--say, you don't know how turble it is to
be a movie star.  Awful!

"I have to give interviews, and every time I go out of the house
somebody is there horning in, trying to photograph me, and I have
to wear trick clothes--oh, horrible clothes!--and old ladies come
and stroke my hair, and I have to listen while they tell me what a
dandy actor I am--and honest, Max, I'm fierce, and now I've got to
meet the king of--Oh, golly, I forgot!  You ARE the king!"

"Yes, hang it!"

"It's fierce!"

"It is, by Jove!" mourned Maximilian.

"I wish we could run away and find some nice farmhouse and just be
kids there, and feed the pigs!"

"Rather!  Wouldn't I like to!"

So engrossed was Terry in Maximilian that he had not realized that
Ginger was standing stiffly at attention.

"Oh, jiminy, I forgot to introduce Mr. Ginger Bundock, Max--Your
Majesty."

Then Ginger was kneeling, kissing Maximilian's hand.

"Oh, I say, please don't do that!" begged Maximilian.

"An Englishman, sir, knows wot's befitting to a Royal Majesty!"
protested Ginger.

"Oh, chuck it, will you!"

"Right you are, sir!"

And the three small boys, actor and king and page, started to play
with the delightful assassinations of the Early Christians in the
model of the Colosseum and, aside from a profuse buttering of the
conversation with "sirs," Ginger was not uncomfortably obsequious
to these great men.  Indeed, apropos of Terry's further complaint
that it was awful to have to retake a scene twenty times, Ginger
complained darkly, "If I may say so, sir, an 'otel page 'asn't too
cheery a time, you know.  There's old gentlemen that get very
drunk, sir, and expects you to bounce out and buy 'em clean shirts
after all the shops is closed, and there's old ladies that gets you
into their rooms and asks you, 'Are you saved?' and--"

Maximilian interrupted, "Then we ought all three to run away and--"

"And be pirates!"

"Splendid!" said Maximilian.

"Uncle 'Ennery Bundock used to be a pirate!" yearned Ginger.

From the next room flared a voice, "Good heavens, Marie, I TOLD you
to send that dress down to be pressed."

Maximilian quaked, "Oh, it's my mother!  She's looking for me."

"No," said Terry, looking pale.  "It's mine."

"Erp!" said Josephus.

Bessie entered the room swiftly, glanced at Maximilian and cried,
"Good heavens, can't I leave you for one moment without your
picking up a lot of ragtag and bobtail?  Who's this brat?  Send him
home.  We're going to pack and go to Paris."

"Mother!  This is King Maximilian of Slovaria!"

Bessie's eyes darted like humming birds.  From her fluttered
expression it might be judged that she was recalling the
rotogravure pictures of the boy king.  She gasped at Maximilian,
"Oh, I'm so sorry I spoke mean to you!  Honestly, are you the
king?"

"I'm afraid so!"

"I guess I ought to call you 'Your Majesty,' but I met you so sort
of sudden and--uh--Did your mother know you were coming up here,
King?"

"I'm afraid not.  I rather ran away."

"Oh, my gracious, then she'll be worried to death.  I must take you
right down to her.  But we'd be real pleased to have you come up
here and play whenever you get the time.  Come on, Terry; we'll go
down with His Majesty.  And you, Ginger--you beat it!"

Hesitatingly, glancing at each other like conspirators but ruled by
Bessie's clanging voice, the two royalties sheepishly followed her,
not to the surreptitious back stairs but to the haughty flight in
front.  At her former enemy, the bobby, on guard on the floor
below, Bessie snarled, "I'm with His Majesty," and stalked past
him.

"I guess I better take you right to your mother, King, so's she'll
know you're all safe," beamed Bessie.

"Oh, I'm--Honestly, I'm afraid she might not like it.  Mother
always has a massage and rests from tea time to dinner, and she
doesn't like to be disturbed.  Thank you very much for coming with
me, but I can take care of myself now."

"Well, I thought, seeing I'm right here--it won't be a bit of
trouble; I have a few minutes to spare, and maybe we won't go to
Paris tomorrow, after all--I thought it might be nice if I could
arrange for you to play with Terry again."

"Oh, I would like that!  Perhaps we'd better see Count Elopatak.
He's in charge of most of my arrangements.  He'll be here in Room
416."

Bessie saw that along the corridor doors were opening, curious
heads popping out.  A tremendous functionary in plush breeches,
yellow waistcoat and powdered wig was bearing down.  Seizing
Terry's hand, she followed Maximilian into 416.  It was a bedroom
converted into an office.  At a desk was a tall, black-mustached
man with a monocle.

He spoke to Maximilian in a strange tongue; the king answered.

Coming out from behind the desk, the monocled one bowed and
observed, "It is very kind of you, Madame Tait, to have brought
back His Majesty.  And now if I may haf the pleasure of escorting
you upstairs--My name is Elopatak; I am a gentleman-in-waiting to
Their Majesties."

"I'm pleased to meet you, Count.  I think I've talked to you on the
phone."

"I believe I do remember having that pleasure!"  Very dryly.

Elopatak looked embarrassed as Bessie ardently shook his hand and
crowed, "I want you to meet my boy, Terry.  You've probably seen
him in the cinema."

"Oh!  Oh, yes.  Quite."

"Terry and His Majesty got along just lovely, and I thought it was
nice, both of them being famous like they are, to get together like
this.  You had a good time, didn't you, King?"

"Oh, thank you very much."

"And I thought it would be just lovely--both boys would prize it so
much in after years--if we had a news photographer take a few nice
pictures of 'em playing together.  I guess both their Publics would
be tickled to see 'em."

Elopatak cried, all in one word, "Butmydearmadamethatwouldbequite-
impossibleohquite!"

"But look here!  They like each other."

"My dear madame, I'm afraid you cannot possibly understand that a
royal personage has to consider many things besides his own
preferences, and while I am sure His Majesty found your son
delightful, as he is, you see he must represent Slovaria, and to be
paraded in the cinema would not be dignified. . . .

"Maximilian!  I hope you have not forgotten that you are to be
taken to a Workmen's Club this afternoon by Prince Henry.  I'm very
sorry, but it's your mother's request, and I'm afraid you must dash
in and dress for it at once!"

The king looked patiently melancholy.  He shook hands with Bessie
and with Terry; he murmured, "I do hope I shall see you again," and
marched slowly out.

Bessie was clamoring, "But look here!  Queen Sidonie would
understand how I mean.  After all, there's only one heart that can
understand and do for a small boy, and that's his mother, so if I
could see her and explain--"

"Her Majesty is resting, and she has every moment filled until
Their Majesties go to Sandringham next Saturday.  So if I may
escort you upstairs--"

This time Elopatak did not offer his arm to Bessie; he took hers,
firmly.  Bessie saw that there was danger of a scene which might
get into the papers, might ruin her.  Stiffly she said, "Thanks; I
can find my own way.  GOOD day!"

As she clumped upstairs she was touchingly ignorant of what
Maximilian and Terry had whispered to each other while she had been
talking to Elopatak.

"I hate it all!  Now I'll have to go and make b'lieve I'm a king
for a lot of people in the East End.  I wish I could run away with
you!" groaned Maximilian.

"Look, Max!  Let's DO it!  I hate being a star.  News reels!
Having to pose.  Let's go be cabin boys on a pirate ship."

"Really?  Really run away?"

"Sure; you bet.  Look, Max, they watch you all day, but can't you
sneak away good and early in the morning?  I'll meet you tomorrow
morning, by the back stairs, and we'll make plans."

"Yes!  I will!  But what do you mean by early?"

"Oh, before anybody's up.  Eight-thirty.  Or is that too early for
you?  What time do they get you up at home--I mean at the palace?"

"Six."

"What?  Six?  In the morning?  Why, you poor kid!"

"Then I have to ride an hour before breakfast, and have a cold
bath."

"Why, you poor KID!  Gee, that's fierce!  Gosh, I guess being kings
is even worse 'n being actors!  But I bet you eat one darn' big
breakfast after that."

"Oh, yes.  Cocoa and sometimes three rolls!"

"Don't you get any ham and eggs?"

"For BREAKFAST?  Oh, one couldn't eat eggs for breakfast!"

"Say, in Poppy Peaks I eat six flapjacks and about six steen
millions of gallons of maplsirup!"

"But," in rather a worried way, "I'm afraid they'll make us get up
very early on a pirate ship."

"Naw!  Didn't I see 'em making 'Yo, Ho, Ho'?  Pirates always drink
rum all night, and they wear silk, and they don't get up till noon
anyway.  Look!  Quick!  I'll be there--back stairs--six tomorrow."

Max was politely shaking hands with the Taits and making exit; but
his hands were held behind him and he was showing six fingers.



Bessie was cross and hopeless-looking, all that evening.  They were
to have gone to the theater, but Bessie said shortly that they
would stay home--she had some plans she had to think about.

Terry's chief difficulty that evening was getting hold of Ginger.
His mother had explained, adequately, that Ginger was a roughneck,
if indeed not an alley cat, and it was TIME she DID something about
Terry's taste for low COMPANY and where he GOT it, she couldn't
SEE--and his father was JUST as bad.

By bribing the chambermaid to call Ginger, Terry was able to meet
him for a second at the elevator.

"Look!  Ginger!  Be up here tomorrow, six in the morning.  Max'll
be here.  We're going to run away; going to be pirates.
Understand--SIX!"

"I'll be there, Gaffer!  I'm not on duty till eight--I live out--
but I'll sleep in a linen closet 'ere tonight, swelp me Bob!"

It was only because his mind was charged with the thought that he
was going to run away now and lead the jaunty life of a pirate that
Terry managed to awake at a quarter to six.  He slipped into blue
knickers and a blue jacket, creeping softly about the fog-dimmed
room that he might not awaken the snorting Humberstone in the room
beyond; he tiptoed down the corridor, followed by Josephus the
hound, just as Ginger emerged from an elevator which he had run
himself, and as Maximilian slipped up the darkness of the back
stairs.

Terry whispered feverishly, "We ARE going to run away.  Now swear
it!"

"I swear!" muttered Maximilian and Ginger.

"Swert!" said Josephus.

"Till death do us part, by jiminy Christmas!"

"Till death do us part!"

"And," croaked Terry, suddenly inspired, "we're going to start
right now."

"Oh, I say, Terry, we couldn't do that!  Not--not right now,
without making plans.  Boys always make plans before they run away.
Lookit Tom Sawyer and Huck," protested Max.

"Am I the boss of this gang?"

Maximilian said humbly, admiringly, "Yes, Terry, but--"

"Am I, Ginger; am I, hey?"

"Ra-ther!"

"Didn't you," Terry demanded of Maximilian, "have some trouble
getting up here this morning?"

"Yes.  I did.  I met a policeman patrolling the hall.  He didn't
dare say anything, but I know he watched me.  I'm afraid he'll go
wake old Elopatak."

"Do you see?  Just as I've told you," crowed Terry.  "Next time we
may not be able to get together at all.  We'll start right now,
this minute.  Bimeby we'll write nice letters to our mothers--and
my, they'll be proud as anything when we come back from pirating
and give 'em parrots and ivory and Spanish doubloons and all like
that."

"I've got no mother nor no father but I'll give me Spanish
doubloons to me uncle 'Ennery--'e used to be a pirate 'isself--'e
says it's a rare life.  I fancy we'll find a good pirate ship at
Bristol," said Ginger, in a judicious way.

"Come!  We'll start!  Ginger'll take us down to the basement and
show us how to sneak out," commanded Terry.

"But I SAY," protested Maximilian, "we have no money."

"Haven't we, though?" Terry jeered.  "Lookit!  Here's fifty pounds
Mother gave me.  I was to give it to the Infants' Charitable and
Rehabilitation Institution today . . .  It WOULD be good publicity,
at that.  Pictures of me giving each kid a pound.  Still, I guess
pirates don't go out for publicity much.  Not anyway when they're
running away from their mothers.  Come on, WILL you?"

And the resolute Terry was followed down the hall, into the
elevator, through monastic cellars and corridors and fog-choked
areaways, by the uneasy Maximilian and the triumphant Ginger.  But
as they came out on Berkeley Square, in a wet dawn smelling of coal
smoke, broken only by the sound of a one-lunged taxicab, as
Maximilian realized that he had escaped from the ardors of kinghood
without being captured, while at the same time Ginger realized that
he had given up an excellent job and was committing a felony, to
wit, stealing and abstracting a valuable piece of property, to wit,
one blue uniform, the property of the Hotel Picardie Co., Inc.,
London W. I, their attitudes changed.  Ginger became uneasy,
looking back, trying to whistle, while Max strode on, rising into
song, breathing this damp exciting air, peering into this
mysterious fog, for the first time an adventurer in a land of
boundless freedom, safe from the respectfully disapproving people
who every moment watched him.

And as for Josephus, he rushed hither and yon with all the
excitement of an honest alley dog who has been released from a
satin suite.

Ginger stopped them to hiss, "We must disguise ourselves!  Directly
the alarm is given, any bobby will know us.  I'm in me uniform, and
anyone can see that you two are gentry."

"Why, Max and I have on awful' simple suits!  Nobody would ever
notice 'em," insisted Terry.

For once, Ginger was pleasantly able to be superior.  "Simple, me
eye!  You may know all about courts and the likes of that, but I
know the bobbies."  The other two looked at him humbly, regretting
their ignorance, and Ginger crowed:  "I know a place where we can
get some simply 'orrid old clothes.  Oh, beautiful!  And the man 'e
knows me uncle 'Ennery, and I think I can get 'im to exchange our
clothes for old ones without charging us a bob.  Come ON!"

Ginger led them into the mediterranean mysteries of Soho.  Here, in
streets that ran like wounded snakes, was a world of Italians,
Greeks, Spaniards, with a sprinkling of Chinese and Syrians,
dwelling in gloomy low-windowed flats over restaurants or over
sinister-looking chemist shops with signs in strange peppery
languages.

Josephus went hysterical over rubbish piles and pushcarts.  Ginger
stopped at an old-clothes bazaar on Greek Street, but at the door
he looked terrified.

"Crickey!  The lad will remember me uniform!  'E mustn't see me.
You two must get some clothes for me, too; I'll meet you down at
the next alley, and change in the court be'ind."

Ginger vanished, running.  Terry and Maximilian glanced at each
other nervously; nervously they called the valiant Josephus and
stroked him.  They could not confess that they were such weaklings,
but neither had ever been allowed to go into a shop by himself,
unwatched.

"Oh, hang it, I'm not afraid!" snarled Terry.  Max looked grimly
courageous.

The proprietor, a gentleman from the sunny lands of Syria, was
eying them from the window.  He rubbed his hands when they came in,
and simpered.

"I want two old suits, quite old, for this boy and me," said Max.
"We're--uh--going camping.  And another suit for a boy about two
inches taller than me."

"Erggg," said Josephus, in a tone of positive dislike.

While the proprietor fetched them, Maximilian muttered, "Do you
suppose he has a decent dressing room here?  Really, the place
seems dirty!"

"No!" urged Terry.  "We mustn't change here and leave our things--
Scotland Yard might trace us by our clothes if we left 'em."

"Oh!"  Maximilian seemed distinctly flattered.  "I've read about
Scotland Yard--detective stories I borrow from an English gardener
at the palace at home.  Do you suppose we'll have a real inspector
hunting for us?  CLUES?  How ripping!  Do you REALLY think so?"

"Oh, rather.  At least I should think they'd search for a king,
wouldn't you?"

"Oh, yes; I suppose they would.  You see, I've been a king so short
a time that I don't quite know.  But think of a Scotland Yard
inspector hunting for you--microscope and bloodstains and
everything.  I say, I do like this!  It's so much more practical
than Latin."

The old-clothes man was coming with three suits which were as
beautifully 'orrid as Ginger had promised.  All three of them were
gray along the seams, they were greasy, and the buttons hung
wearily on worn threads.  The three were worth, as masquerade
costumes, six shillings altogether, but anyone with fancies about
sanitation would have demanded five pounds to touch them.

"Just the thing for an outing, young gentlemen!" exulted the
dealer.  "Three quid for the lot--and your own clothes, of course.
Swelp me, I'm giving 'em away."

The greenhorn Terry was roused to irritation.  Three quid--he had
learned from the scholarly Ginger that a quid was a pound.  He
snorted, "Don't be silly!  I'll give you a pound and a half--what'd
you call it, thirty shillings?--and we'll keep our own clothes."

As he spoke, he had brought out his roll of notes, the fifty pounds
that were to see them to Bristol and the gay free life of piracy.
The dealer's eyes popped, and he said crooningly:

"You're an American, aren't you, matey?  And a fine little fellow,
you and your little friend."  Then, savagely, grasping Terry's
shoulders, his yellow teeth showing evilly, "And where did you
steal your fine clothes?  I'll take FOUR quid, and keep quiet--else
I'll call in the police and we'll find out what a couple of
American stowaways, blinkin' young tramps that've stole their
clothes, are doing in my shop at seven in the morning!"

Josephus had, on sight, fallen out of love with the old-clothes
dealer; he had growled when the man seized Terry; now, with
enthusiasm, he grabbed the man's trousers leg and began to tear.
The man leaped back, barricaded himself behind a rack of old coats.
Terry snatched up the bundles of clothes, dropped a pound note on
the counter, shooed Max and Josephus outside.

"He'll have us arrested!" quaked Max.

"Huh!  He'll never call the police, now he's got his quid.  The
less he sees of the police, the better he'll like it.  I ain't
afraid!" said Terry boldly--while inside he was fully as calm as a
cat chased up a tree by a pack of dogs.

They reached the alley mouth and the waiting Ginger, and Ginger
drove them through the alley, a courtyard, another alley, and a
blind area way behind a shop.  They undressed madly, while Terry
told of their misadventure.

"I'll 'ave my uncle 'Ennery scrag 'im!" raged Ginger, "'E eats men
alive, Uncle 'Ennery does."

Dressed, they were as scandalously soiled a trio as was to be found
in greater London.  Ginger insisted on tearing the caps and
stockings of his two heroes; on rubbing dirt over their faces.

He himself was capless.  But now, free of his skin-tight uniform,
he chucked his fears away with it, and cried, "Righto, me brave
lads!  'Tis off to the boundin' blue--as Uncle 'Ennery says.  What
about a bit of breakfast?"

To avoid the old-clothes man, after hiding their proper clothes in
a garbage can, he led them through further alleys and courts to a
restaurant which he guaranteed to be the best twopenny dive in
London.  Relieved of worried relatives who insisted on nice
porridge with nice cream, Terry and Max joyfully smeared themselves
with a breakfast of fried fish, apple tart, pink cakes, and jam.

Josephus had a voluptuous bone, and as for Ginger, he breakfasted
on tea and fish.  He was a pal, he said, of the assistant pastry
cook at the Hotel Picardie, and he could have all the cakes he
wanted, any time.

"You can eat all the cakes you want?  Any time?  And nobody stops
you?" gasped H.R.M. Maximilian III.

"All you want?" marveled Terry.

"Ra-ther!" said Ginger superciliously.

Mr. Ginger Bundock knew that Max was a real king, that Terry was a
famous actor, but he couldn't believe it.  They looked like two
dirty small boys, and while they seemed to have read books, which
had never been a habit in the Bundock family, they were so ignorant
of his London that he couldn't help feeling superior.  And over the
fish and pink cakes he was rather sniffy with them about reaching
Bristol and the haunts of pirate ships.

"It's west of London.  Right away west," he said authoritatively.

"How far?" asked Terry.

"How far?  Oh, a long way.  Seventy-five miles.  Or per'aps three
'undred."

"Pooh!  That's not far!"  Terry was trying to regain the
scornfulness of leadership.  "My dad and I drove from Los Angeles
to San Francisco in one day, and that's five hundred miles!"

"Oh, I dare say!  You Americans!  An Englishman wouldn't care to go
barging about like that, you know!"

"I think," hinted Max, "we ought to be taking a train at once,
before they find we're missing."

"A train?" grumbled Ginger.  "Oh, I say now, don't be balmy, Max--I
mean, Your Majesty."

"Oh, I like being called Max.  Please call me Max, Ginger.  We're
all fellow pirates now, you know."

"Aw, Max sounds Dutch," reflected Terry.  "Let's call him 'Mix.'"

"Mix?" queried Maximilian.

"You bet!  That's the name of one of the swellest cow-punchers in
the movie game, ain't it, Ginger?"

"Oh, that would be nice.  'Mix.'  And then of course as a pirate I
suppose I WOULD have to have a nom de guerre."

"A wot?" demanded Ginger.

"He's swallowed a dictionary!" protested Terry.

"Oh, I am sorry!" wailed Maximilian.  He wasn't sure what he had
done to offend these superior representatives of the Anglo-Saxon
race, but he was ready to apologize for anything or for nothing to
keep their comradeship.

"'T'sall right, Mixie," said Terry generously; then abruptly, to
Ginger, "Anyway, why shouldn't we take a train?"

Ginger recognized his master's voice.  More humbly:  "W're d'you
suppose they'd look for us first?  On trains, of course!  We must
walk.  BESIDES!  Did you ever 'ear of pirates taking trains?"

"Don't you think we ought to carry swords, though?" worried Terry.
"Pirates always carry swords."

"Oh, I don't believe modern ones do," said Max.  "I fancy they just
carry revolvers and six-shooters and things like that, and I don't
believe we need buy them till we reach Bristol."

"Well, maybe; but when we get to Bristol, we ought to buy sabers
AND guns, so when we find a pirate ship and go aboard, they won't
think we're a lot of tenderfeet," insisted Terry.

"That's right," Ginger agreed.  "Now as I say, we must walk, and I
think we ought to go up to 'Ampstead 'Eath and practice being
tramps--you know, meeting savage dogs, and sleeping under 'edges,
and telling the direction by the bark on the trees, and making
fires by rubbing sticks together."

"That's so; we must learn that," agreed Captain Terry, and the
three boys, solemnly starting for the Spanish Main by way of
Hampstead Heath, made a gallant beginning by finding a Number 24
bus.

The morning fog was gone when they reached the heath; the broad
wastes of that tamed moorland were bright with sun and wind, in
whose exhilaration the three boys forgot that they were king and
star and expert hotel page, and chased one another, yowled and
whistled like any other three small boys, while Josephus went
earnestly mad, snapping at royal heels with loving painfulness.

Max remembered from his English history that the heath had once
been the favorite scene of highway robbery, and the four of them
played highwaymen.  Josephus, unhappily harnessed by Terry's belt,
was the faithful coach horse, Terry was the driver, Ginger the
haughty and noble passenger, and Max was permitted the grandest
rôle of all, that of the robber.

Old Jim Dangerfield, the gallant coachman of the Yorkshire Flyer,
was apprehensive.  He clucked cheerily enough to his stout team of
dappled mares, Jo and Sephus, and hummed a careless little tune
("My Toil and Strife Has Gotta Eye on We, Ba-by"), but when his
passengers were not looking, brave Old Jim shuddered, hunched down
within his many-caped cloak, now whitened with flying snowflakes.

On the seat beside him was a mysterious man in the old, ancient
costume of the day.  He had refused to give his name, but he was
Lord Montmorency.  Old Jim knew nothing of this, however.

And so they went on across the heath when all of a sudden a cloaked
and masked man, riding a huge great big black horse, leaped out
from behind a tree and leveling his pistol cried, "Your money or
your life!"

Old Jim reached for his own pistol, but the villain shot him dead
and he expired all over the ground, while the faithful Jo and
Sephus licked his face--after craftily sneaking out of their
harness.

But the brave Lord Montmorency was not to be quelled by anybody.
Crying, "Come one, come all!  I defy the blooming lot o' ye!" he
leaped from the coach, drawing his trusty sword and, knocking the
pistol from the wicked highwayman's hand, he engaged him in mortal
combat.

It lasted a long time.  In fact, it lasted till Old Jim Dangerfield
protested, "Oh, that ain't fair--you two going on swording for
hours and hours when I'm dead!  I'm going to come to life!"

In the argument with Lord Montmorency and the robber as to whether
a pistoled coachman could prove to be merely playing possum, they
forgot the game and, panting, lay on the grass.

"My uncle 'Ennery was a 'ighwayman once," mused Ginger.

"Oh, didn't they arrest him?" fretted Terry.

"No, 'e wasn't THAT kind of a 'ighwayman.  'E gave all 'e robbed to
the poor."

"Where was this?"  Terry sounded suspicious.

"Hey, quit scattering dust all over me, will you, Mixy?" was
Ginger's adequate answer.  "Excuse me, Your Majesty, but honestly,
it gets in me eyes."

"When we go back--I mean, if we hadn't gone off to be pirates, I'd
ask my mother to invite your uncle Henry to the palace," considered
Max.  "He must be a wonderful man.  I don't like my uncles so much.
But I had some lovely ancestors.  I'm descended from Genghis Khan!"

"Oh, I've seen 'im.  'E's that banker from New York.  'E often
stays at the Picardie," condescended Ginger.

"I think that must be another Khan," Max said doubtfully.  "I think
Genghis lived years and years ago.  And my grandfather had an
estate with two hundred thousand acres of land!"

"Huh!  That's nothing," said Terry.  "I know a movie actor in
California that's got a million acres."

"Oh, he has not!" protested Max.

"He has, too.  And I'm going to have a million million acres and
grow bees, when I grow up."

"Oh, you will not!" complained Max.  "Besides, I'll mobilize my
army and conquer Roumania and Bulgaria and a lot of countries, and
then I'll have a million trillion billion acres!  And another of my
ancestors was Seljuk."

"Never heard of him.  Jever hear of Seljuk, Ginger?"

"Now!  Never 'eard of 'im!"

"And one of my ancestors," continued Terry, "was sheriff of
Cattaraugus County, New York!"

"Me uncle 'Ennery was a sergeant major in Boolgaria," Ginger
confided.

"Oh, say, let's play soldiers!" cried Terry.  "Which of you has the
most military training?"

"I almost joined the Boy Scouts once.  There was a curate ast me to
join 'em," reflected Ginger.  "But you, Mixy, a king must 'ave
bushels of military training."

Max confessed, "Not really.  Just fencing and riding as yet.  Oh, I
am a field marshal in the Slovarian Army, and I'm a colonel in the
British Army, and in Italy I'm an admiral and a general, but I
wouldn't say I was a soldier."

"I know all about militaries.  I saw 'em making some of the film of
'The Big Parade,'" boasted Terry; and Max, who had been faintly
irritated at their ignorance of his renowned ancestor, Seljuk, rose
again to admiration for his hero, the great Terry Tait, and
murmured, "Oh, I saw that picture.  And you saw them MAKING it?
That must have been priceless!  You be the captain on one side, and
Ginger can be it on the other."

And that was a very nice war.  There were any number of hand-to-
hand combats, as well as a devastating machine gun produced by
Ginger's winding his 3/6 watch and remarking, "Brrrrrrr!"

When the war ended they lay in the long grass again while Ginger
modestly admitted that during the World War his uncle 'Ennery had
single-handed captured sixteen Germans.

Terry interrupted, to shout, "Oh, I've got a dandy game.  Let's
play king!"

"Oh, that's no fun!" protested Max.

"I don't mean like any of these ole kings they got today--I mean
like there used to be in the Olden Times.  I'll show you.  You'll
like it, Mixy.  I'll be king, and Ginger, you're Lord High
Executioner."

"Kings don't have Lord High Executioners!" protested Max.

"They do too!  Anyway, they always usta have!  And Ginger is my
Lord High Executioner, and you're a rebel, Mixy; you're leading a
band of brigands."

"Who's the brigands?" said Max darkly.

"Josephus, of course, you poor boob.  Now, look.  See, here's my
throne."  Terry had found a beautiful rock on the heath.

H.R.M. Terry sat down, very royal, his left hand on his hip, his
right waving an object which resembled a weed but which to him was
a golden scepter.

"Now, you and Josephus go and hide off there over the hill," he
ordered Max, "and begin to sneak up on us.  You're a band of
rebellious peasants.  And you, Ginger, you're my Commander in
Chief."

"But you said I was Lord Executioner, 'ooever 'e is!"

"You're going to be, later, stupid!  Now you beat it, Max!  That's
it, hide!"

As Max and Josephus began a most realistic creep through the grass,
glaring their hatred of all monarchial institutions, King Terry
reasonably addressed his Commander in Chief, together with hordes
of other courtiers who were standing behind the commander:

"What ho, my lieges!  Trusty messengers, coming apace, do give me
informations that hell is let loose in our mountaineous domains and
a band of rebels is now approaching.  Gwan out, then, my brave
troops, and capture 'em.  Seek to the nor-nor-east, I bid thee. . . .
Now you go capture 'em, Ginger; but you put up a fierce battle,
Max."

Fierce battle.

During it, King Terry bounced with excitement, demanding, "Lookit,
Ginger, you gotta keep running in--you're a messenger--telling me
how the battle is going; see, I'm standing up here at the window of
a tower looking across my royal plains."

The trusty commander brought in the rebels, and despite a plaintive
"Ouch!" from Max, cast them roughly down before the king, who
climbed from the tower (which resembled a hummock of grass), seated
himself on his throne again, and addressed the traitor:

"Villain, art guilty?"

"What do I say?  I've never played this game before," begged Max.

"Neither have I, stupid!  Haven't you got any imagination?  What
WOULD a villain say if a king bawled him out like that?"

"I don't know.  Oh, I fancy he'd say, 'No, I aren't.'"

"You are too!  Commander in Chief, ISN'T he guilty?  Didn't you
catch him treasoning?"

"Ra-ther!"

"Then--(Now you're Lord High Executioner.)  Then off with his
head!"

"Oh, I say!" protested Max.  "Kings can't have people's heads cut
off!"

"Of course they can!  Don't be silly.  Maybe they can't in
Slovaria, but lots and lots of places they can."

"Can they, honest?" admired Max.  "I wish I could!  By Jove, I'd
have old Michelowsky's head off in two twos!  He's my tutor--a
horrid man!"

"Dry up!  You hadn't ought to interrupt a king, don't you know
that?  Now you get your head cut off.  And Josephus, too.  Now you
form a procession.  See, I walk in front, and then you and
Josephus, and Ginger in behind with the headsman's sword--here, you
can take my skepter for sword, Ginger."

And they marched to the sweetly solemn tune of "Onward, Christian
Soldiers," chanted by Terry, and the noble tragedy of the event was
only a little marred by Ginger's peeping at his 3/6 watch just
before he dealt the awful blow, and exclaiming, "It's one o'clock!
We must find a bit of lunch.  I'm not going to start pirating on an
empty stomach!"



Bessie Tait, whenever she felt depressed and put upon, slept late
in the morning, waking only to think of the broiling letters she
would write to her enemies, and to doze off again.  This morning,
at ten, she was still sunk among the little pink-and-white lace
pillows with which she had adorned the Hotel Picardie bed when she
was roused by her maid and her secretary, crying, "Oh, madame,
there's a lady; I think it's--"

As Bessie sat up, iron-jawed and furious in her mosquito-netting
nightgown, the maid and secretary were thrust aside by a woman who
dashed into the room raging, "What have you done with my son?"

She was a tall woman, not unlike Bessie herself, and if her voice
was not so harsh, she was more voluble.  "If you have kidnaped him,
if you have let him go off with your brat--"

"Are you crazy?  Get out of here!  Miss Tingle, call a policeman!"
wailed Bessie.

"Oh, madame, it's Queen Sidonie of Slovaria!" whimpered the
secretary.

"Queen! . . .  Sidonie! . . .  Oh, my Lord!" howled Bessie,
capsizing among the pillows.

The queen flew to the bed, savagely seized her arm.  "Where is he?
Is he here?"

"Your son?  The king?"

"Naturally, idiot!  I know you lured him here yesterday--"

"Now, you can't talk to me like that, queen or no queen!  How do I
know where the boys are?  I don't get up in the dawn!  We'll see."

Bessie huddled into a dressing gown that was like the froth on
sparkling Burgundy.  Hoping, in her agitation at this somewhat
unexpected way of meeting royalty, that Queen Sidonie was noticing
her superior chic, she led Sidonie quickly through the living room,
into Terry's room.

And it was empty.

In the room beyond, Humberstone, the valet whom Bessie had hired
just for this purpose of impressing Sidonie, slumbered in a fume of
gin, and instead of an edifying morning coat he exhibited the top
of a red flannel nightgown.

If Sidonie had landed on Bessie somewhat precipitately, it had been
a lover's greeting compared with the way in which Bessie hailed the
valet, seizing an ear in each hand.  The tempestuous Sidonie, for a
generation the storm cloud of the Balkans, looked almost admiringly
at Bessie's vocabulary, and the flower of English Service quaked as
he stated that, because of his neuralgia, he had overslept, and of
Master Terry and of all kings whatsoever he knew nothing.

Bessie flew at Terry's cupboard.  "His blue suit is gone!"  She
flew at the telephone.  "Ginger--that's the no-'count bell boy
Terry plays with--he's missing, they say downstairs.  Oh, Queen!
He's missing!  My little boy!  And I been so hard on him!  Oh, you
may love your kid, the king, a lot, but you don't love him one bit
more than I do mine and--"

And two women, Her Majesty of Slovaria and Mrs. Rabbit Tait of
Mechanicville, sobbed on each other's shoulders.

It took Bessie exactly six minutes to dress--Sidonie drove out the
trembling maid and herself helped Bessie.  In six and a half
minutes they were in the royal suite below--and Bessie, beside the
queen, stalked past the agitated Count Elopatak with the air of a
Persian cat.  She scarcely noticed the perfumedness and powderiness
of the queen's own rooms, or the weeping maids.

Sidonie had the manager of the hotel, its three detectives, and all
the policemen on duty, in her room instantly.  The policemen now on
guard had gone on duty at eight; they had seen nothing of the king.
No servant in the hotel had seen anything of him since yesterday.
Elopatak was, meantime, calling Scotland Yard.  In a few minutes he
had a report from one of the policemen who had been on duty in the
corridor through the night that he had seen Maximilian playing ball
in the corridor early, about six, he thought; he didn't know
whether Maximilian had returned to his room or had gone upstairs.

Just then Scotland Yard had a report from the London garbage-
collecting department that two good suits of boys' clothing and a
Hotel Picardie uniform had been found in an alley off Greek Street,
Soho.

Bessie and Queen Sidonie identified the clothes from the
descriptions.

"They've run off together!  It's that cursed bell boy's doing!
Come on, Queen, let's grab a taxi and start right out from that
alley looking for 'em!"

"Yes!" cried Sidonie, to the stupefaction of her suite, and she
fled toward the door, arm in arm with Bessie Tait.  At the door she
shouted back, "I'll telephone every few minutes!  Tell the Home
Secretary to see that hundreds of policemen start right off to look
for His Majesty."  She slammed the door; she jerked it open to add,
"And for Terry.  Hundreds, do you hear?  Hundreds!"

While the alarm went out to every policeman in Greater London,
while the newspaper offices went wild with the news that even
Royalty could not keep from them, two anxious women, very chummy,
sadly patting each other's hands and calling each other "My dear,"
rode through all the tangled streets and byways of Soho, stopping
to ask every policeman for three small boys and an undistinguished
dog who was, for twenty-four hours, to become the most famous dog
in the world.



Because of their free and joyful play--and perhaps because of the
agreeable menu of pork pie, vealnam pie, steak and kidney pudding,
sausage and mashed, strawberry tart, vanilla ice, chocolate ice and
little mince pies--the three musketeers were curiously sleepy after
luncheon at a "cocoa room" near the Heath.  They agreed that they
ought to be starting for Bristol and the wild life, oh! immediately,
but perhaps they would do better if they rested a bit--by attending
a movie, which promised something nice in the way of a drama about
a poisoner.

Terry had become used to tackling shopkeepers.  With the loftiest
confidence he engaged a greengrocer to keep Josephus during the
movie, and bought the most expensive seats.

It was a pleasant and elevating picture, and moral, as the poisoner
died in tremendous agony.

They came out of the theater at four, to find the streets littered
with newspaper placards shrieking, "Disappearance of Boy King and
Yank Cinema Star."

"Jiminy!" whispered Terry.  He hastily bought each of the evening
papers and led his pirate band into the darkest, least conspicuous
back corner of an A.B.C. tea room, to read the news.

The first paper announced that Terry, who, though but eight years
old, had been a celebrated character in Chicago before he became a
film star (which was a neat way of saying that he was a gunman, and
still avoiding the libel law), was believed to have persuaded His
Majesty, to whom he had been presented at a well-known West End
hotel, to run away.  There was no proof that Terry was connected
with the notorious Lisbon gang of counterfeiters and kidnapers, but
still, the police were looking into it.

The second paper spoke of the sinister disappearance of a red-
headed hotel page named Alf Bundock, whose record the police were
examining.

The third came out bluntly and proved that it was a crime of the
Bolsheviki, and demanded that the government renounce its dastardly
policy of permitting Bolshevik spies to roam around innocent
England--kidnaping kings this way.

All the newspapers contained enormous biographies of King
Maximilian and much sketchier accounts of Terry, who was, according
to the three versions, eight, fourteen, and four years of age.  And
all three had pictures, lots of pictures--Maximilian in the uniform
of a Czechoslovakian Horse Marine; Maximilian opening the Museum of
Osteothermodynamics in Tzetokoskavar, capital of Slovaria; Terry in
the rôle of the Poor Little Blind Boy (he recovered his sight, of
course, when the Kind Rich Lady and the Big-hearted Surgeon got
hold of him) in the film "Out of the Night"; Terry gardening at
Poppy Peaks--Terry was known to be as fond of gardening as
Presidential candidates are of haymaking; the Hotel Picardie--X
marks the spot; and sixteen lovely portraits of Queen Sidonie.

But the Evening Era had the greatest triumph of all--an account of
Josephus the Hound, with a photograph furnished by the courtesy of
the Bond Street Dog and Animal Shop.  Only it was the photograph of
a greyhound.  But Terry was slightly comforted by a full-page
advertisement of his film "Kiddies Kourageous," which the
enterprising Halcyon Theater was going to revive.

The three boys crouched over the papers; even Josephus was
crouching, under the table.

"All the 'tecs in the United Kingdom will be looking for us.  We
must cut and run," moaned Ginger.  Then, with such concentration as
he had never given to any intellectual problem, even the question
of transmuting a shilling tip into two-and-six, he considered, "No,
we must 'ide.  They'll be watching even the roads.  We'll lay up
for a couple of days, and then start out by midnight.  Yuss.  'Ide
under 'edges."

"Splendid.  Just like escaping from German prison camps!" gloated
Terry.  "But where shall we hide till--Oh!  At your uncle Henry's!
You said he lived in London.  And he'll tell us all about pirates.
You said he was a pirate once, didn't--"

Ginger looked dark-browed; Ginger looked distressed.  "Now.  Can't
be done.  Me uncle 'Ennery and me isn't on speaking terms."

"Then you'll just have to get on speaking terms!  It's the only
place we've got."

"Now.  Can't."

"Nonsense!"  It was Max, very vigorous.  "Of course an old pirate
would be glad to greet young ones.  You'll take us there at once,
Ginger."

"I will not!"

"Do you hear me, Bundock?"  Terry and Ginger stared equally at the
change in the amiable Max's voice.  "I'm not requesting it; I'm
giving a command.  Do you happen to remember who I am?"

Ginger looked more scared than ever; he snapped back into his
training as a hotel servant; he quivered, "Very well, sir, but I
don't advise it; not Uncle 'Ennery I don't."

But he led them, sneaking through alleys, craftily taking
roundabout bus lines, shivering every time they fancied a policeman
was looking at them, across the river and into the district of
Bermondsey.  It was, to Max and Terry, a London altogether
different from the city of Palladian clubs, snug Georgian houses
about tranquil squares, haughty shops and immaculate streets that
they had known.  They were bewildered by a waste of houses, two
stories high, made of stone or a grimy grayish-yellow brick, set
side by side, without grass or trees--miles of brick dog kennels,
broken only by bristling railroad tracks, warehouses like prisons,
innumerable public houses that smelled of stale beer, and vast
streets that were as disordered as they were noisy.

They left a bus on Abbey Road, and Ginger guided them up a side
street full of little shops.  It was six o'clock now, with smoke-
streaked fog settling down again; the bars were open and into them
streamed navvies with trousers tied above the ankles, old charwomen
in shawls and aprons, scrawny children with beer cans.  They were
all contemptuously indifferent to a stray American small boy, these
thirsty workers.

"Let's hurry to your uncle's," Terry begged.

"You won't like 'im," said Ginger darkly.

"But you said he was so jolly!  That time he sang 'Knocked 'Em in
the Old Kent Road' to the Empress of Japan."

"Oh.  THAT time," observed Ginger.

His steps slackened.  For all their urging, for all Josephus'
cheerful leaping, Ginger loitered, till they came to a hand laundry
and, pointing through a steamy window at a small squirrel-toothed
narrow-shouldered man who was turning a wringer, Ginger muttered,
"That's 'im; that's Uncle 'Ennery."

Terry and Max stared, feeling empty at the stomach.  They said
nothing.  They didn't need to.  They simultaneously doubted whether
Uncle 'Ennery had ever captured sixteen Germans at once, or been
more than just engaged to the princess of the South Seas isle.

"You WOULD barge in!" complained Ginger and, inching open the door
of the laundry, he whimpered, "Uncle 'Ennery!"

Uncle 'Ennery lifted his head, rubbed the back of his neck as
though it hurt, peered through the steam at Ginger, and remarked,
"Ow, it's you, you little beggar!  Get out of this!  Coming around
in your 'otel uniform, making mock of your betters, and they your
own relations!  And now you're in the gutter again; you're in
ragsantatters again, and I'm glad of it, I am.  Get out of this!"

"I ayn't in the gutter!  I'm just on me 'oliday," protested Ginger.

"Yes, a fine 'oliday, as'll end in the workus.  Get out!"

"Give me three bob to show 'im," Ginger whispered to Terry and,
displaying the money, smiling a false sugar-sweet smile, he
crooned, "Me and me friends are going tramping.  We'll give you
this three bob if you'll let us sleep 'ere tonight."

"Let's see the money!" demanded Uncle 'Ennery.  He turned the
shillings over and over.  Looking slightly disappointed that they
seemed to be genuine, he grunted, "I ought to 'orsewhip you, you
young misbegotten, but I'll let you stay.  Only you goes out and
gets your own supper."

Without further welcome, he led the three boys and Josephus among
the tubs in the back room of the laundry, up an outside stairway to
a chaste establishment consisting of one room (Uncle 'Ennery was a
widower and childless) with one bed, unmade, a fireplace stove, a
chair and a cupboard.

"You can sleep on the floor," he snarled.  "The dog--'e goes out in
the areaway."

Terry looked indignant but--they were alone, fugitives, hunted by
the entire British police force. . . .  What was the penalty for
kidnaping a king?  Hanging, or life imprisonment?  He sighed and
stood drooping, a very lonely little boy.

Somewhat comforted at being taken in by his loving uncle, Ginger
piped, "Cheer-o!  We'll go 'ave a bite to eat.  There's a love-ly
fried-fish shop on the corner."

He walked ahead of his comrades in crime, rather defiantly.  Behind
him, Terry whispered to Max, "I don't believe his uncle Henry ever
was a deep-sea diver!"

"No; and I don't believe he was a sergeant major in the Bulgarian
Army--hardly more than a private," Max said.

"Or an aviator!"

"Or an African explorer!"

Ginger pretended that it didn't matter that he had lost now the
Uncle 'Ennery whose exploits had been the one glory by which he had
been able to shine beside a king.  Most boisterously he ushered
them into the fried-fish shop with, "If you toffs ayn't too good
for it, 'ere's the best bloaters in London."

And through supper he contradicted them, laughed at their ignorance
of such fundamental matters of culture as the standing of the
Middlesex cricket team and the record of the eminent middleweight,
Mr. Jem Blurry.  So Max and Terry be