No answer. Miss Biddums had leave to attend the wedding of a Calcutta schoolmate. His Majesty the King had forgotten that.

‘I want a dwink of water,’ he cried, but his voice was dried up in his throat. ‘I want a dwink! Vere is ve glass?’

He sat up in bed and looked round. There was a murmur of voices from the other side of the nursery door. It was better to face the terrible unknown than to choke in the dark. He slipped out of bed, but his feet were strangely wilful, and he reeled once or twice. Then he pushed the door open and staggered—a puffed and purple-faced little figure—into the brilliant light of the dining-room full of pretty ladies.

‘I’m vevy hot! I’m vevy uncomfitivle,’ moaned

His Majesty the King, clinging to the portière, ‘and vere’s no water in ve glass, and I’m so kirsty. Give me a dwink of water.’

An apparition in black and white—His Majesty the King could hardly see distinctly—lifted him up to the level of the table, and felt his wrists and forehead. The water came, and he drank deeply, his teeth chattering against the edge of the tumbler. Then every one seemed to go away—every one except the huge man in black and white, who carried him back to his bed; the mother and father following. And the sin of the ‘’parkle cwown’ rushed back and took possession of the terrified soul.

‘I’m a fief!’ he gasped. ‘I want to tell Miss Biddums vat I’m a fief. Vere is Miss Biddums?’

Miss Biddums had come and was bending over him. ‘I’m a fief,’ he whispered. ‘A fief—like ve men in ve pwison. But I’ll tell now. I tookt—I tookt ve’ parkle cwown when ve man that came left it in ve hall. I bwoke ve paper and ve little bwown box, and it looked shiny, and I tookt it to play wif, and I was afwaid. It’s in ve dooly - box at ve bottom. no one never asked for it, but I was afwaid. Oh, go an’ get ve dooly- box!’

Miss Biddums obediently stooped to the lowest shelf of the almirah and unearthed the big paper box in which His Majesty the King kept his dearest possessions. Under the tin soldiers, and a layer of mud pellets for a pellet-bow, winked and blazed a diamond star, wrapped roughly in a halfsheet of notepaper whereon were a few words.

Somebody was crying at the head of the bed, and a man’s hand touched the forehead of His Majesty the King, who grasped the packet and spread it on the bed.

‘Vat is ve ‘parkle cwown,’ he said, and wept bitterly; for now that he had made restitution he would fain have kept the shining splendour with him.

‘It concerns you too,’ said a voice at the head of the bed. ‘Read the note. This is not the time to keep back anything.’

The note was curt, very much to the point, and signed by a single initial. ‘If you wear this tomorrow night I shall know what to expect.’ The date was three weeks old.

A whisper followed, and the deeper voice returned: ‘And you drifted as far apart as that! I think it makes us quits now, doesn’t it? Oh, can’t we drop this folly once and for all? Is it worth it, darling?’

‘Kiss me too,’ said His Majesty the King dreamily. You isn’t vevy angwy, is you?’

The fever burned itself out, and His Majesty the King slept.

When he waked, it was in a new world—peopled by his father and mother as well as Miss Biddums; and there was much love in that world and no morsel of fear, and more petting than was good for several