POLLYOOLY ENTERTAINS ROYALTY
Pollyooly came away from the presence of the grand duke in something of
a daze. She came down the steps in the sea-wall quite unconscious of
the fact that she was not moving over level ground. The eleven golden
sovereigns in her hand felt too good to be true; and at the bottom of
the steps she stopped and counted them with eyes which could hardly
believe what they saw: eleven golden sovereigns.
She gave them into the care of Mrs. Gibson while, in obedience to the
behest of the grand duke, she continued to play rounders.
The game had fallen into a state of suspended animation during her
absence from it. Her return enlivened it. Presently she was again
absorbed in it, playing it with the concentration with which she did
most things, the concentration which is so large a part of genius,
which made her one of the finest grillers of bacon in England. She
forgot the grand duke; she forgot the eleven golden sovereigns; she
thought only of the game; and she drove her team and the perspiring
prince with merciless vigor.
The grand duke watched it closely, now and then applauding in an
excited, ringing voice. Prince Adalbert had performed his one great
exploit and was now declined upon a lower level. He played his best,
obeying with his natural clumsiness the shrieked commands of Pollyooly;
but he did not again arise to a really meritorious feat. Nevertheless,
the grand duke was content with him.
He did not indeed watch him very closely; he had chiefly eyes for
Pollyooly.
Once he said with enthusiasm:
"She is ze gompanion Adalbert 'af need of."
And again he said with enthusiasm:
"'ow it would be goot if she goom to Schweidnitz and blay wiz 'im all
ze days, Erkelenz!"
The slim equerry shook his head and said in a tone of conviction:
"She would nod coom, Highness."
Being of a younger generation, he spoke better English than his royal
master.
The grand duke shook his head sadly, and said;
"No: she would nod goom. Would she nod goom for mooch money, you zink?"
"I do nod zink she could be persuaded to coom," said his equerry.
"No: she would nod goom," said the grand duke. The baron had an
inspiration; he said in a stern voice:
"Ze day, 'ighness; ze day will goom soon. Zen you will gommand only;
and Bollyooly will obey."
"Ach, yes: ze day," said the grand duke, watching the playing children.
"It will goom soon doubtlez. Bud Bollyooly, will she obey? Zeze
English blay zere creeket very 'ard."
"She would be made obey," said the baron firmly.
The grand duke changed the subject by raising his voice in a splendid,
heartening roar at Pollyooly, who was running swiftly around the bases;
and for nearly an hour he did his best to burst the welkin. Then he
summoned the perspiring prince, shouted and waved good-bye to
Pollyooly, and walked to his son's lodgings to take a little
unnecessary nourishment before driving to the station.
Pollyooly went on playing till a quarter of five, when the game broke
up to let the players go to their tea. She collected the Lump from the
Gibson nurse and the eleven sovereigns from Mrs. Gibson, and started
down the beach tea-wards. As she went down the beach several earnest
enquirers stopped her to ask what the grand duke had said to her and
what she had said to the grand duke. They wore the air of being very
deeply impressed by the occurrence.
Pollyooly gratified their curiosity. Four of them said that they would
have been so confused by being suddenly hurried into the presence of
royalty that, not knowing whether they were standing on their heads or
their heels, they would not have found a word to say.
Pollyooly said quite truly that she had not suffered from any such
confusion. She did not add, as with no less truthfulness she might
have done, that what had induced a slight access of confusion in her
had been the sudden and unexpected possession of eleven golden
sovereigns. But she had a feeling, somewhat obscure, that such a
happening should not confuse a red Deeping; therefore she did not say
anything about it.
She and the Lump were still at tea when the Honourable John Ruffin
returned from his golf and joined them. She told him of the coming of
the grand duke, of his thanks for the improvement in Prince Adalbert's
health, and of the eleven splendid golden sovereigns.
"And very nice too. I congratulate you," said the Honourable John
Ruffin cheerfully.
"Thank you," said Pollyooly.
"I always have heard that the grand duke is a very decent sort, as well
as being astute; and this proves it," he said.
"But it does seem such a lot for the little I've done. I could have
done a lot more, if I'd known," said Pollyooly in a tone of discomfort.
"Not a bit of it," said the Honourable John Ruffin in a confident tone.
"As what you've done goes, eleven golden sovereigns isn't a penny too
much for it. I haven't observed the treatment; but I have no doubt
that you're making another boy of Prince Adalbert."
"Well, he does look better and he does get about quicker than he did,"
said Pollyooly slowly, weighing her words.
"Well, that's a good deal," said the Honourable John Ruffin in an
encouraging tone.
"And he is a little brighter too, though he does only grunt; and of
course he behaves better; he doesn't knock the other children about
like he used to."
"Well, there you are," said the Honourable John Ruffin, in the tone of
one completely satisfied.
"Oh, but he is slow!" Pollyooly protested. "It would take weeks and
weeks to really do anything with him--weeks and weeks."
"But what can you expect?" said the Honourable John Ruffin amiably.
"The red Deepings were notable people, ruling a county, and hacking and
hewing the best people in four counties round, when the ancestors of
the prince were swineherds in a Prussian forest. And those ancestors
stayed in that forest for five hundred years after that. Prince
Adalbert doesn't throw back more than a hundred and fifty years. If a
red Deeping produced an Adalbert, he would throw back six hundred and
fifty years; and it isn't done."
"Yes," said Pollyooly politely, though she did not follow at all his
abstruse dissertation.
"So you see you needn't feel overpaid at all," he said.
"No," said Pollyooly in the tone of one perfectly satisfied.
"Besides, if you do, you can always put in a little more training."
"Oh, yes: that was what I was meaning to do," she said.
Now that Pollyooly had been approved, or rather enthusiastically
welcomed, as the ideal companion of Prince Adalbert, the baron was all
affability and winning smiles. He had indeed reason to be, for she
made life much easier for him. Without a care he abandoned Prince
Adalbert to her whenever she would have him, and sat reading or
sleeping in his deck-chair on the sunny sands with a mind wholly at
peace. With that approved guardian the prince must be safe.
Thus it came about that he became Pollyooly's perpetual companion, or,
to be exact, her perpetual hanger-on. He could not be said to afford
companionship to her, for, like the Lump, he preferred the grunt to
articulate speech. He played in all the games in which she played--at
least, if they were not too difficult for his understanding. If they
were, he watched her play them with the dogged attention of an
enthusiast.
As she came to know him better and better, it is to be feared that
Pollyooly remembered his exalted station less and less. She quite
forgot the prince in the boy. She sometimes deplored the fact to Mrs.
Gibson that though Adalbert could now be trusted not to get into
mischief by any act of will, he was so stupid that he needed a
perpetual eye on him.
The Honourable John Ruffin sometimes enquired about his progress in
morals, manners, and intelligence; Pollyooly's report on it was always
dispirited. But he was surprised, on returning home from Littlestone
to tea one evening, to find Pollyooly entertaining royalty in the
parlour of the flustered Mrs. Wilson.
The prince had come back from a walk through the marsh with her, tired;
and she had thought it better that he should have tea before walking
the length of the village to his own lodging.
The Honourable John Ruffin did not let his surprise be seen; he greeted
his royal guest civilly and sat down. Pollyooly questioned him closely
and with genuine interest about his successes and reverses on the
links. Then the Honourable John Ruffin observed that his royal guest
was flushed; then he discovered that Pollyooly was entertaining him in
a fashion at once negligent and drastic: she made no effort to include
him in their talk, but she was watching him with the eye of a lynx and
giving him a lesson in table manners with the coldest serenity.
"What is the matter with our royal guest exactly?" said the Honourable
John Ruffin presently.
"He is so hard to teach," said Pollyooly plaintively. "You'd be
surprised. I keep telling him not to eat like a pig; and for about
four mouthfuls he doesn't. Then he forgets all about it; and I have to
begin all over again."
The guilty flush deepened in the cheeks of the prince.
"You must give it time to sink in. He's not used to learning things;
he has been so neglected," said the Honourable John Ruffin with a
hospitable desire to make things easier for her royal guest.
Pollyooly shook her head doubtfully, and frowned sadly upon the prince.
"It would take weeks and weeks; and I don't really ever see him at
meals," she said.
"Never mind: do what you can when you get the chance," said the
Honourable John Ruffin in a heartening tone.
"That's what I must do," said Pollyooly; but there was no great
hopefulness in her voice.
Sadly she handed a plate of cake to Prince Adalbert. There was a
sudden gleam in his small, but Hohenzollern, eye, and in one swift
gesture he took, or rather, to be exact, grabbed a slice, and thrust a
corner of it into his mouth.
As Pollyooly had said, for the first four bites all was well; but the
next three were accompanied by a slushy noise such as arises in a
pigstye at mealtime.
"There! There it is again!" she cried in tones of the bitterest
protest. "Isn't it dreadful?"
The prince flushed a darker red and hushed the slushy accompaniment.
The Honourable John Ruffin looked sympathetically sad.
"I couldn't have believed that anybody could be so hard to teach a
little thing like that to," said Pollyooly mournfully.
The prince grunted.
"Yes. I know you try to do your best--you needn't tell me that," said
Pollyooly, who appeared to understand his syncopated Prussian. "But
what is the good of a best like that?"
The prince finished the slice of cake with only two more slushy sounds.
Pollyooly sighed once or twice; and tea came to an end.
They rose; and Pollyooly said with resolution:
"I see what I shall have to do. I shall have to look after his outdoor
manners only."