said aloud. "What do you bring a sack out to
lunch for--scraps?"

"For shame, Clarence!" cried Edna.

"It's not a sack, as it happens," said the Count sulkily. "It's a long
bag--and what I use it for is entirely my own business."

"I don't know so much about that," retorted Clarence. "With such a lot
of plate in the Palace!"

"Clarence!" cried Edna again. "This is too outrageous of you!"

"Much!" put in Lady Muscombe. "As if the Count couldn't bring his clubs
with him if he's going on to golf somewhere!" she said to Clarence in an
undertone. "And of course he'd want a very long case for them! You
really _must_ behave more decently!"

"I mean having this out with the beggar," he replied. "Count, her
ladyship suggests that you may have golf clubs in that bag of yours. Is
that so?"

"And if I have," said the Count. "Why shouldn't I?"

"Because you don't play golf. No one does here--now, and I'll take my
oath you can't tell a brassey from a putter. You never owned a set of
clubs in your life!"

"Really, my boy!" said King Sidney nervously. "A scene like this! Before
our guests! It won't _do_, you know. Drop it!"

"Yes," said Lady Muscombe, laying her pretty but slightly over-manicured
fingers on Clarence's sleeve. "You're only making everybody
uncomfortable. Talk to me instead!"

"Presently," he said. "If you really have got golf clubs, Count, I
should like to have a look at them after lunch."

"I never said I had got those things," replied the Count, with a
wonderful command over his temper. "And if you want to know what _is_ in
the bag, I don't mind telling you--only a few pumpkins from my own
gardens."

"You mean to say you make such pets of your bally pumpkins that you take
'em out driving with you? That's such a likely story!"

"Clarence," said the Queen, "I will not have poor Ruprecht badgered like
this. If he chooses to carry pumpkins with him--as we do gold
sometimes--and distribute them to deserving persons, it is so much the
more to his credit."

"He'd get 'em buzzed back at his head pretty soon, if he did!" replied
the impenitent Clarence. "He's not exactly the object of general
adoration in these parts, as he jolly well knows.... Anything upset you,
Marchioness?" he inquired of Lady Muscombe, who was giggling with a
quite un-peeress-like lack of restraint.

"Nothing," she said faintly. "Only the--the pumpkins. You really are
_rather_ a funny Royal Family, you know!"

"I'm sorry to make mys