"His Majesty will receive you."




CHAPTER X

HE MEETS THE KING


The room into which they were shown was large and well-proportioned,
but was furnished and decorated in the style of the middle of the
nineteenth century--that atrocious period often referred to as the
Early Victorian, a term which always calls forth a smile at any
assembly of true lovers of art and carries with it the idea of all
that is heavy and vulgarly inartistic. But on the whole the room had
an air of comfort, flooded as it was with warm sunlight that streamed
through the four great windows on the right and those on each side of
the fireplace at the opposite end.

Around the large table, sat a gathering of the most distinguished men
of the Empire drawn from the Privy Council. They had evidently
finished the work of the day, as was shown by the absence of all
papers on the table and the precise manner in which the different
cabinet ministers had their portfolios neatly closed in front of them.
One would say that they had settled down to be amused or bored as the
case might be. They looked like a company of well-bred people whose
host has just announced that "Professor Bug" will relate some of his
experiences among the poisonous orchids of South America, or like a
lot of polite though perfectly deaf persons waiting for the music to