[Illustration: 9013]
HE king's body-guard waited in the outer court of the palace, but the
palace was only a dull, red cottage, and the court a low porch that
surrounded three sides of it. As for the body-guard, they were not
dressed as such great people are wont to be. One of them wore a calico
dress, canvas shoes, and an untrimmed hat of soft red felt. The other,
for there were but two of them, was resplendent in gray knickerbockers,
and a blue flannel shirt, with white anchors worked in the corners of
the sailor-shaped collar. As for the king, but a short time before' he
had been only a rollicking little fellow astride of a cherry tree bough,
and a blue-eyed little Nan had stood holding out her apron to catch the
cherries he threw down, and gazing up at him with a face full of wonder
at his daring. But the old and brittle bough had suddenly given way
under his weight, and Reginald Fairfax tumbled in a sad little heap to
the ground.
[Illustration: 0015]
Quick as a flash Nan sat down by his side, with her feet straight out
before her, and drew the brown head into her lap, while the tears fell
fast on the face that seemed so still and lifeless. Her brother Harry
ran for the young doctor up at the hotel, as fast as his stout little
legs could carry him.
All this had happened only last week, and now Reginald lay on a hospital
cot in his own little room in the cottage, and Harry and Nan were
waiting on the porch till the doctor should come out and they could be
admitted.
They were both very quiet, for they had not seen Regie since the
accident, and were awed at the thought of being soon ushered into his
presence. Harry kept making round holes in the gravel path with the heel
of his boot; Nan sat staring in abstracted fashion at a little wreath of
oak leaves which she was balancing on one extended hand.
Presently the doctor came out. “You can go up now,” he said, “Regie
expects you.” Then he caught up his tennis racquet, which he had left on
the porch, and hurried away, for the doctor was taking his vacation.
If he had not been quite a young doctor, perhaps he would rather have
forgotten for those two short weeks that there was such a thing as a
patient in the world. But as matters stood he did not seem to mind in
the least, that now and then he must stop whatever he was doing, and run
over to see “how the little Fairfax boy was coming on,” and, young as he
was, he had set Regie's leg as neatly and dexterously as any older and
more experienced surgeon could have set it.
The children crept quietly up the stairway which landed them at
Reginald's door. Nan paused midway in the room and looked toward Regie
with a puzzled frown, for the little fellow stretched out on the cot did
not seem exactly like the Regie she had known, tumbling around out of
doors.
Harry scarcely stirred a foot beyond the door-sill, and screwed his
funny round mouth into a funnier pucker, a queer little habit to which
he always resorted in moments of embarrassment.
“I'm very sorry for you, Regie,” said Nan, drawing a trifle nearer.
“It is too bad,” replied Regie. “It couldn't be helped though;” a remark
which he had volunteered several times, as if anxious that no one should
think that carelessness had aught to do with the accident.
“We've thought of a splendid game,” said Harry, feeling that he ought to
say something.
[Illustration: 0016]
“I guess the only game I'll play for a good while will be still pond, no
moving,” said Regie, with a poor little ghost of a smile.
“Oh! no, indeed,” cried Nan, eagerly, “you're to be the principal one
in this game. You're to be a little king, and we are to be your
body-guard.”
“What's a body-guard?” asked Regie, in a tone as though he doubted
the merits of everything with which he could not claim previous
acquaintance.
“Oh! it's a----, but we are not going to tell many people,” answered
Harry, glancing significantly toward a room opening-out of Regie's,
where some one, a stranger to him, sat knitting.
“She's only my nurse,” Regie explained; “you mustn't mind her, for
she'll have to be round a great deal, and you don't catch me having a
body-guard unless I know just what it is.”
“It won't hurt you,” laughed Nan, with her hands behind her back, and
still standing in the centre of the room. Harry had made so bold as to
take a seat on the edge of a high-backed rocker, so very much on the
edge, in fact, that it threatened to land him on the floor any moment.
“Why don't you sit down, Nan?” Reginald asked at last.
“I can't sit down, Regie, because of the crown,” and Nan looked
beseechingly toward Harry, as if acting under orders.
“Yes, you may show it now,” was Harry's patronising answer; whereupon
Nan exultingly held up the little oak wreath before Regie's wondering
gaze.
“Oh! is that the crown?” and Regie betrayed a shade of disappointment
in his tone, having a conviction that such articles ought to be made of
gold, or at least of silver.
“Oh! Regie, don't you like it? It took me a whole day to make it,” Nan
exclaimed, with a perceptible quiver in her voice.
“Oh yes, it's very nice, very nice indeed! only--well! it'll wither, you
know.”
“I can make another then,” she said, complacently, as though that
objection were easily met. “May I put it on your head?”
“Certainly;” and Regie bent his head forward from the pillow.
“Nan stood in great awe of the apparatus of weights attached to the cot
to keep Regie's limb from shortening while the broken bone was knitting.
“Are you sure it won't do your leg any harm?” she asked, nervously,
holding the crown, poised in both hands, above his head, for she could
only boast eight years, and was rather a timid little body. Regie
laughed outright at this, and Harry shouted, “Of course not, goosie!”
with true brotherly disgust.
Thus encouraged she dropped the crown on to Regie's head.
“You look lovely in it,” she said, bringing the hand-glass from the
bureau; “you can lean your head back, it won't hurt the crown.”
“It hurts me though,” said Regie, settling back against the pillow, and
holding the little mirror at arm's length that he might see the general
effect; “it pricks.”
“I do not think a king ought to mind such a thing as a prick,” Nan
remarked, seriously, for she possessed a lively imagination, and, for
the time being, Regie was a real little king.
“Perhaps not,” said Regie, recalling something about “Uneasy lies the
head that wears a crown” (which proverb had once been set for a copy in
his writing book at school), and thinking how very true it was. “But you
have not told me anything about the body-guard,” he added.
“As I understand it,” said Harry, who liked to use a big word when he
could, “the body-guard sort of takes care of the king, and does whatever
he tells 'em to do.”
“Then you and Nan are to do _whatever_ I tell you,” with an accent on
the “whatever.”
“Yes,” said Nan, with hearty seriousness. Harry merely nodded his head,
as if not quite willing to commit himself by an audible “yes.” He
looked as though he foresaw some unpleasant possibilities in Regie's
“whatever.”
“If you think of anything you'd like to have,” Nan farther explained,
“why, Harry or I will run and get it--and things like that you know.”
“My! but that'll be fun for me,” said Regie.
“Of course it will,” Nan replied; “that's why we thought of it, because
there's a great many kinds of fun you'll have to do without while
you must lie so still. Will it be for very long, Regie?” she asked,
wistfully.
“Pretty long, I guess,” answered Regie, with an honest little sigh.
“It was Nan that made it up,” said Harry, whose thoughts had a trick of
following their own bent independent of other people's; “I don't know as
I'm going to like it.”
“Like what?” queried Regie, with a puzzled frown.
“Why, the being ordered about.''
“Oh, I'll be easy on the body-guard,” laughed Regie.
“I'm ashamed of you, Harry Murray, to talk like that right before poor
Regie!” and Nan's face showed how real was her mortification.
“I don't believe kings wear their crowns to bed!” exclaimed Regie,
having borne the pricking of the stiff little leaves as long as he
could. “This king won't, at any rate. Hang it on that nail, Nan, where
I can reach it, and put it on whenever you seem to forget that I am
the king, and you must mind me,” with a sly look toward Harry. Harry's
threatened downfall became a reality just at that moment, and the
unbalanced-rocking-chair landed him suddenly on the floor.
“I think we had better go now,” he said, picking himself up, with a
furtive look in the direction of the nurse, knowing that such a mishap
was rather inexcusable in a sick room.
“I should think we had,” observed Nan, with a good measure of reproach
in tone and accent; and after a good-bye to Regie, and a friendly
word or two from the nurse who had come in with Regie's luncheon, the
children took their departure.
[Illustration: 0019]
Down the path, across the boulevard and over to the beach they
trudged, side by side, but without saying a word to each other. Nan was
preserving a dignified silence, which means that she wished Harry
to understand by her manner that she did not at all approve of his
behaviour during their visit. But Harry was so completely absorbed in
his own thoughts as to be quite unmindful of the implied rebuke. When
they reached the beach he lingered to watch the fishermen bring their
boat in over the surf, leaving Nan to walk the rest of the way home
alone.
Regie felt tired after his talk with the children, and having eaten the
luncheon, soon dropped off into a sound little nap, to dream of kings
and queens and all sorts of royal things, suggested, no doubt, by the
oak-leaf crown on which his brown eyes were resting the last moment
before the long lashes closed over them. In these brown eyes and long
lashes lay the charm of Regie's face, and he had reason to be very
grateful to them. Perhaps you wonder how this could be? Well, the very
next chapter will tell you.
[Illustration: 5020]
[Illustration: 0021]