Page:The food of the gods, and how it came to earth.djvu/257

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who kept the stationer's shop by the main entrance to the Palace, where the little Americans get their tickets for the State Apartments ...

And then:

"We are authorised to deny--" said "Picaroon" in _Gossip_.

And so the whole trouble came out.


IV.

"They say that we must part," the Princess said to her lover.

"But why?" he cried. "What new folly have these people got into their heads?"

"Do you know," she asked, "that to love me--is high treason?"

"My dear," he cried; "but does it matter? What is their right--right without a shadow of reason--and their treason and their loyalty to us?" "You shall hear," she said, and told him of the things that had been told to her.

"It was the queerest little man who came to me with a soft, beautifully modulated voice, a softly moving little gentleman who sidled into the room like a cat and put his pretty white hand up so, whenever he had anything significant to say. He is bald, but not of course nakedly bald, and his nose and face are chubby rosy little things, and his beard is trimmed to a point in quite the loveliest way. He pretended to have emotions several times and made his eyes shine. You know he is quite a friend of the real royal fami