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Show IJMlPF BIRMINGHAM WNU Servio.. CHAPTER XII Continued 16 fjjlnlr was tired, worried, over--tlted and was drinking too much Lpagne. In his soberest senses he Loot understand English very well. Be 'certainly did not understand what , said to him then. But he readily lomlsed that Tommy should have Ly opportunity of explaining hlm-i( hlm-i( to the king and Culypso. The W so he said, meant to travel with tle'party as far as Breslau. Tommy (odd talk to him in the train. He mild have several hours In which to B? all he wanted. Afterward he Mid talk to the princess, all day oag If he chose, for three whole days. I, would be at least three days before ttey could leave Breslau. Kelt morning Tommy and Janet (lurch went to the Friedrich Strasse ration in good time for the train to Breslau. They found the king and Calypso waiting for them. Caslmir irrired a few minutes later and saw Sun off. The princess and Janet Church trav-id trav-id together. The king and Tommy mt their places in a smoking com-prtment. com-prtment. Fortunately they had it a themselves. As soon as the train narted Tommy braced himself in an !wt He wanted to get an explanation explana-tion of what was happening, and he ias quite determined to make his own potion clear. It was the king who began the conization. con-ization. "I'm glad," he said, "that we have tils carriage to ourselves. I want to lave a little talk with you." "And I want to talk to you," said .cmmy. By way of showing that this talk ns going to be of a very serious kind le stood up and set his back against it door of the compartment. The iing settled down in a corner and lit i cigar. "Are you, or are yon not really a ling?" The king turned his cigar over be-teen be-teen his fingers thoughtfully. 'That," he said, "Is rather a hard question to answer. I certainly was i king once.- If you asked Casimir t'i say I am king still, since I haven't itdleated. On the other hand, the natesraen of the Entente powers, if m ask them, would say that I am not ' king, because they have definitely timed me out. However " here he ailed pleasantly "It doesn't really miter, does it? As I told you last "fat, I don't keep up any kind of Ute now. You needn't remain stand-l1 stand-l1 up. I'd much rather you sat down i were comfortnble. Have a cigar." Tommy sat down and took a cigar. "Now," said the king, "let's talk t this unlucky Miss Temple bus-Jess. bus-Jess. Tin sorry to tell you that Calyp- feels very strongly about It, ab-wdly ab-wdly strongly. in fact, I had the rlns and Janet Church Traveled Trav-eled Together. JW difficulty In getting her to 1th h., mornllg. If I hadn't come Sflilari, m-VSe'f' whlon 1 dl(ln'' Pr-1 Pr-1 wfnt t0 do, I shouldn't have Toml fle.her lnt0 the traln'" ki come u hls 0PPortunlty ;fl'flrnW 7 St00d up aKaln- IIe i( as Ifl01'e determined when SI standing up. O"",! t0 make 11 Perfectly clear Wheyg i8t'd' "that 1 am not Lor(l tnljM v that you've some-N some-N C,d T U1 wlth hlm. you and , Butlt 's a mistake. It I Sty's.- Ul N0T LORD NOR- l'toM'lthe klnE. "Is exactly ! to , lypso- You sa'd as Une i ? Slght' Md lve been J" fou L er a" d"y- 1 t0'd her th . nrthlQe abut Miss til at you,1 never seen the "' never even heard cf her, thnt, In fact, YOD ARB NOT LORD NORHEYS." The king gave a pleasant and smiling Imitation of Tommy's emphatic emphat-ic assertion. "I don't think you quite understand me even now. I really am not Lord Norheys." The king waved his hand airily. "That's a tremendous comfort to me," he said. "It gets us out of the Miss Temple difficulty, and, to tell the truth, that affair was becoming serious." se-rious." "Who on earth is Miss Temple?" asked Tommy, desperately. "Oh, an actress, I believe," said the king, smiling. "Or a dancer. But It doesn't matter, does it? Lord Norheys, Nor-heys, it seems, has foolishly promised to marry her. Even that wouldn't really have mattered. Tou could have kept her in the background " "Don't say 'you,' " said Tommy. "I've told you over and over again that I am not Lord Norheys." "Of course you're not, I know that and I'm very glad of it. It simplifies things immensely, for though Lord Norheys might have married Calypso Calyp-so in spite of Miss Temple, I'm afraid Calypso wouldn't have married him. Miss Temple wrote a letter to my daughter, a most pathetic letter, begging beg-ging her not to take Lord Norheys away from her. It affected Calypso greatly. There was something In It about a 'one ewe lamb,' and Calypso, having lots of flocks and herds, it seemed to me rather an odd description descrip-tion of a young man. The patriarch used to quote that parable to me, but then it always was well, a 'ewe' lamb. That stuff never made much Impression on me, but Calypso wept when she read it. She said that if yon'd promised to marry Miss Temple" Tem-ple" "But I haven't." "So I told Calypso. I told her that she must not mix you up with Lord Norheys. She said that even If you hadn't actually promised to marry her, you had certainly stolen away her young affections." "I haven't," said Tommy. "Of course not. Their affections are seldom as young as all that. At least, that's my experience. Those ewe lambs are generally pretty well able to take care of themselves. But, of course, It would have been no good saying ' that to Calypso, or for the matter of that, to the patriarch. The patriarch Is a very simple-minded old man. He believes In young affections and broken hearts and all that sort of thing. However, fortunately, we haven't got to argue with him and Calypso along those lines. All we've got to do is make them believe that you are not Lord Norheys. Once they believe that, all our difficulties vanish. van-ish. The marriage can go on." "Do you mean to say," said Tommy, Tom-my, "that you're still willing to allow al-low me to marry your daughter?" "Of course I am," said the king. "I always was. I never took that Miss Temple business in the least seriously. serious-ly. These things will happen. Everybody Every-body except Calypso and the patriarch knows that." "But it hasn't happened," said Tommy. Tom-my. "At least, it hasn't happened to me. It may possibly have happened to Lord Norheys. I don't know anything any-thing about that." "Just what I said to Calypso, and Just what you will have to say to the patriarch. Then the only obstacle to the marriage vanishes." "No, It doesn't," said Tommy. "At least, that one may. But there's another an-other obstacle, a much worse one." "If there's another," said the king, "for heaven's sake don't let her write to Calypso. Who is she? Don't say it's Miss Church. If it Is. we're done." "I never saw Miss Church in my life till yesterday," said Tommy. "I thought It could hardly be her. She really is rather too old for that sort of thing. But If it had been her. it would have been awkward, very awkward Indeed. She'd have gone In person to the patriarch, and nothing you could have said would have straightened things out. However, if It isn't her. It doesn't really matter, so long as the other one doesn't telegraph tele-graph or write." "There Isn't another one." "You've just told me there Is." said the king. "You said, 'another and a much worse one.' " "I said another obstacle," said Tommy Tom-my "not another girl. As a matter of fact, there's no girl at all and never nev-er was. The obstacle I mean Is far worse than any girl." "Couldn't possibly be worse, said the king, "from the point of view of the patriarch." "The obstacle is this," said Tommy. Tm only a curate." "I don't regard that as n obstacle at all," said the king. "Our patriarch doesn't believe in the celibacy of the clergy He isn't married himself, but lot. of our priest, are. and the pa triarch hasn't tan slightest oblectko to it." "That's not my point at all. As a matter of fact, I'm not a Roman Catholic Cath-olic curate and I'm perfectly free to marry If I like." "That wouldn't have mattered, anyhow," any-how," said the king. "The patriarch would have absolved you from any vow you might have made. He's terrifically ter-rifically powerful In that sort of way and can give you absolution for practically prac-tically anything. The trouble about him Isn't that he can't give absolution; absolu-tion; but that sometimes he won't." "How can a curate marry a princess?" prin-cess?" said Tommy. "That's my point. If she really Is a princess" "She is," said the king. "From the point of view of any one who accepts legitimate theories, she's most certainly cer-tainly a royal princess. But I hope I needn't say that I don't attach any importance to the fact. We are living in a world that has been made safe for democracy and nobody cares a pin for those old-fashioned ideas. There's nothing to prevent any princess from marrying an English marquis." "But I'm not an English marquis," said Tommy. "I keep on telling you that and you won't believe me." "It isn't that I don't believe you," said the king. "It's simply that I find it very hard to remember. However, the main thing Is not to let any old- "Are You, or Are You Not Really a King?" fashioned Ideas about disparity of rank trouble you. The whole matter has been arranged." "I wish I knew who arranged that I am to marry a princess." "Well," said the king. "There were several people in It. I was one' "Why?" said Tommy. "Why did you make such an extraordinary arrangement?" arrange-ment?" "There were a good many reasons," said the king. "I couldn't go back to Lystrla myself. The League of Nations Na-tions wouldn't let me. I'm not sure that I want to even if they would. I'm earning much more in the Mas-cotte Mas-cotte than you'll ever get out of Lystrla. Lys-trla. But I'd be glad to see Calypso back on her ancestral throne. It'll be some sort of provision for her, poor girl, and she hates dancing in the Mnscotte. You may think I ought to provide for her: but I can't. At least, I'd much rather not. I'm earning a good enough salary, but the cost of living Is terrific. We middle-class professional pro-fessional men that's the class I belong be-long to now ore being squeezed out of existence everywhere in Europe. That's the reason I want to see Calypso Calyp-so safely married and on a throne." "But why did you choose me?" "I dMn't choose you. The fact Is that the Lystrians knew very well that they couldn't get a king at all unless he was an Englishman. The Entente lowers would have turned' down any one else. And the Lystrians wanted a king, all of them. There's the patriarch, pa-triarch, for Instance. He hates playing play-ing second fiddle to a Megallan man who's merely an archimandrite, but has taken to wearing a gold chain round his neck much thicker than our patriarch's. Of course, as soon as Lys-trin Lys-trin gets back Into the position of an Independent kingdom, our patriarch will be top dog of the two. Then there ore the Caslmirs. There are eight or ten Caslmirs, all counts, and there's the rest of the aristocracy. They're nobodies In a large republic like Megnlln. but they're very important impor-tant people In Lystrla. Besides, they like having a court to hang about. You can't Imagine how those fellows love dressing up in uniforms, putting on swords and attending state balls. And the way they eat ! I assure you that a bullock roasted whole and a couple of pigs go no distance at a supper sup-per table In Lystrla. It used to be a frightful expense to me. I needn't tell you the Megallan President doesn't do that kind of thing. He can't, poor fellow. His salary won't run to It. That's another example of the straitened strait-ened circumstances of the middle classes." "I still don't see why the Lystrians chose me." snld Tommy. "If they did." (TO BE CONTINUED.) |