Page:Wee Willie Winkie, and other stories (1890).djvu/68

 62 bed. "Read the note. This is not the time to keep back anything."

The note it was curt, very much to the point, and signed by a single initial. "If you wear this to-morrow 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 very angry, 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 little boys. His Majesty the King was too young to moralise on the uncertainty of things human, or he would have been impressed with the singular advantages of crime, ay, black sin. Behold, he had stolen the "'parkle cwown," and his reward was Love, and the right to play in the waste-paper basket under the table "for always".

He trotted over to spend an afternoon with Patsie, and the Commissioner's wife would have kissed him. "No, not vere," said His Majesty the King, with superb insolence, fencing one corner of his mouth with his hand. "Vat's my Mamma's place—vere she kisses me."

"Oh!" said the Commissioner's wife briefly. Then to herself:—"Well, I suppose I ought to be glad for his sake. Children are selfish little grubs and—I've got my Patsie."