"Oh!" Lucy gave a little sigh. Prince Hugo was
undeniably fat and very slow to catch a joke, but there
was certainly a different flavor in this talk of dukes
and ancestral seats to the gossip about the Whites and
Greens at home.

Indeed, the whole party, including even Mr. Perry,
experienced a sensation of sudden vacancy and
flatness when his Highness left them. It was as though
they had been sheltering a royal eagle that was used to
dwelling in sunlit heights unknown to them, and now they
were left on flat ground to consort with common poultry.




CHAPTER VI

Miss Vance led her party slowly through Scotland and down
again to London. Mrs. Waldeaux went with them. The
girls secretly laughed together at her fine indomitable
politeness, and her violent passion for the Stuarts, and
hate of the Roundheads. But Mr. Perry was bored by her.

"What is it to us," he said, "that Queen Mary paddled
over this lake, or Cromwell's soldiers whitewashed that
fresco? Give me a clean, new American church, anyhow,
before all of your mouldy, tomby cathedrals. These
things are so many cancelled cheques to me. I have