Part 27 (1/2)
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.”
CHAPTER XVII
THE DUKE HAS AN IDEA
Pollyooly did not again entertain royalty. She kept firmly to her resolve to superintend only the outdoor manners and behaviour of Prince Adalbert. She would not have her feelings again harrowed by his painfully exact rendering of the noises made by a st.u.r.dy, happy porker over its trough. But out of doors he continued, for the rest of her stay, to be her perpetual, noiseless, devoted, and generally perspiring squire.
That stay came to an end along with the Honourable John Ruffin's windfall. It had been a very pleasant stay; Pollyooly had enjoyed it more than any time of her life, more even than the days she had spent at Ricksborough Court when Lord Ronald Ricksborough had come there from Eton to spend his holidays. She was a little doubtful (for all that they were engaged to be married when she should have grown up and fitted herself to become the wife of an English peer by dancing for a while in musical comedy) whether the days at Pyechurch would be more pleasant if he were there, for he would naturally take the place of leader, and she was very happy in that position herself.
She wrote only one letter, a brief letter, to him from Pyechurch, for she was really too busy to write more often (at the Temple she wrote at least once every ten days) and he wrote back to say that he wished he were with her instead of mugging away at his beastly work in his stuffy study. His letter brought home to Pollyooly the great advantage she had over richer children in having years ago pa.s.sed the seven standards at the Muttle Deeping school, and so done with tedious school-books for good and all.
It was a sad day for her and the Lump when their stay at Pyechurch came to an end; but it was an even sadder day for Prince Adalbert. He was losing the one friend he had ever made, the only person in the world for whom he felt a warm admiration and a genuine respect--as warm an admiration indeed as his somewhat limited spirit was capable of feeling. It was not able to attain to the great heights of emotion; but to such a height of grief as it could rise to, it rose. As for his display of that grief, had he been a pretty boy the onlookers could not have failed to find it pathetic; as it was, for all that they were most of them keenly sensible of his royal condition, they were hard put to it not to find it grotesque.
Tears were not in keeping with his Hohenzollern face; and when he at last realised that Pollyooly was really going and for good, he bellowed like a very small, but broken-hearted bull.
A number of Pollyooly's friends and subjects had come to bid her good-bye; Prince Adalbert was no little hindrance to their farewells, for he had a tight grip on Pollyooly's skirt; and not only did his bellowing drown the sound of their voices but also he kept her chiefly busy trying to soothe him.
When at last she detached him from her skirt and bade him good-bye, and climbed into the wagonette, he tried to climb into it to go with her; and the Baron von Habelschwert had to lift him down and hold him firmly.
The wagonette drove off amid a loud chorus of farewells; and little given to the softer emotions as Pollyooly was, there were tears in her eyes as she looked back on the friends she was leaving. Her last sight of the prince was somewhat depressing: in a final access of despair he was kicking the baron's s.h.i.+ns.
Pollyooly said, with far more indulgence than she had generally shown him:
”I don't suppose he'll break out like that very often.”
”Still, after all your training, it is sad to see him ma.s.sacring his faithful mentor,” said the Honourable John Ruffin.
”Yes: it isn't nice of him,” said Pollyooly without any great annoyance in her tone. ”But really it's the baron's fault; he'd only have to smack him about twice.”
”I expect he has conscientious scruples against smacking princes of the blood royal. Many people undoubtedly have,” said the Honourable John Ruffin.
”Perhaps he has. But I think he'll miss me,” said Pollyooly in a tone of sufficient satisfaction.