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Every day the King paid for his six glasses of water at the fountain-head; every day he bought a buttonhole from the pretty flower-seller in peasant costume who was not herself a peasant at all; every day he bought a Jingalese newspaper at the garden kiosk, and sat under the shade of the trees reading it; and nobody, looking at him, would know that even there he was assiduously followed, ringed round and watched by six detectives, nor could they have any idea how carefully the bona fides of each newly arrived visitor was examined, inquired into, and verified all the way back along the route from place of arrival to place of origin; nay, how thoroughly the luggage of any who were in the least suspicious was searched behind their backs in order to discover whether they had any political opinions likely to prove dangerous to a King taking his holiday.
Other women pioneers of education and of reform, rescue-workers, organizers, writers, orators, had the majority of them lived and died without once coming in contact with the official leader of Jingalese womanhood; for they and their like were outside the official ranks, and stood for things combative and controversial and dangerously alive, and only a few of them had been brought to Court in their venerable old age, to be looked at as curiosities when their fighting days were over and their work done.
My readers will give me credit, I trust, for not having sought to impose on them that fear of impending doom, that apprehension of what the next hour might bring forth, on the strength of which the Jingalese press so sedulously ran its extra editions from day to day.
Then came white-faced footmen quaking at the knees; after them eight piebald ponies rather badly behaved and requiring a good deal of holding in; and then Royalty, itself smiling and quite unharmed. And straightway the ordinary loyalty of a sightseeing Jingalese crowd was merged in a passionate and tumultuous cry of jubilant humanity; and the royal procession became a triumphal progress.
A gust of horror and astonishment blew round the assembly; it was a word unknown in the Jingalese Constitution; no place had been there provided for it, it had never been done. Strictly speaking legally speaking, that is to say it could not be done.
And then, well pleased with himself, the practical Fritz let his romantic side appear again, and for two minutes or so he lived up to the sky-like blueness of his eyes and the childlike gentleness of his face, and because his heart was very full of love he talked his own native German, and not Jingalese any more.
"So now you have become a native of us," said a chuckling old Margravine, great-aunt to the Prince, when informed of the exploit by one of her grand-nephews who had mischievously lured Charlotte on. "Now you cannot go back!" For these small princelings were ready enough to make a Jingalese princess feel at home in their midst.
The sight of his daughter at that moment, embarrassed him gave him, indeed, almost a sense of guilt, for he held in his hand a letter from the Hereditary Prince of Schnapps-Wasser accepting the circuitously worded proposal, with all its delicate adumbrations of yet other proposals to follow, that he should visit the Jingalese Court early in the ensuing year immediately, that is to say, upon his return from South America; and though in his reply the veiled object of that visit was not mentioned there was a touch here and there of compliment, of warmth, of a wish that the date were not so far off, which indicated "a coming on disposition."
They watched it as a crowd watches for a similar sign outside the walls of a jail: not that they wanted it to fall but still, if it had to, they dearly wished that they might be there to see. Thus, even in their griefs, did the sporting instincts of the Jingalese people rise to the surface and bring them a consolation which nothing else could afford.
Germany would, of course, officially disown them, while for the purposes of the war we should give them letters of Jingalese naturalization on their enlistment; these, which they would carry in their knapsacks, would prevent them from being shot in the event of their being taken prisoners. Our own army of twenty thousand picked Jingalese sharp-shooters would go to England disguised as tourists.
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