not recognise me. You yourself will not
recognise me. I may not look very much like the King, but I shall not
look in the least like myself. However, you yourself shall see first. If
you think it is all right, as soon as it is dusk you shall go and tell
her that the King has come."

I went to my room and spent about half an hour on that make-up. I think
the result was pretty good, seeing that I had not got all the materials
that I wanted to work with. I called Mrs Crewe up and she was astounded.
She said now that it was perfectly safe, that nobody on earth could have
recognised me.

"Very well," I said. "You must wait until ten minutes after the
down-train is in. Elsie knows the trains and can hear them from where
she is lying. You must tell her that the King does not wear his crown
and his gorgeous robes when he is travelling, but only a black coat,
just like the doctor."

When I was an actor I was never afflicted with nervousness; but as I
heard Mrs Crewe in the next room tell Elsie exactly what I had told her
to say, I shivered with fear. Suppose, after all, the child should find
me out!

Elsie slept in a small bed in her mother's room. As I entered she tried
to raise herself a little, and said in her best voice--the one that she
used in church on Sunday--"I am so sorry that I cannot get up to make a
curtsy to you. And ought I to call you 'Your Majesty' or just 'King'?"

"The correct etiquette," I said, "is for children to call me 'King'. I
am very glad to have been able to come down to see you, Elsie. It was
only by the merest chance that I could get away."

I gave her my whitened hand with the flash rings on it. She put her lips
to it. "That will be something to tell the other girls," she said.

His Majesty inquired who the other girls were. He was told that Elsie
had not been seeing much of them lately, because she had been ill; but
she would be well and strong again very soon now--her mother had told
her so. The other girls were very nice girls. Sarah Miggs had made a
daisy-chain and sent it to her, and it was twice as long as the bed.

All this time Mrs Crewe had, by my direction, remained standing. She
adopted a most respectful attitude, and curtsied whenever I looked at
her. I now heard from her an ominous sniffling. If the silly woman began
to blubber, there was a chance that the thing would be given away.

"Mrs Crewe," I said, with dignity, "you have our permission to retire."

She backed out of t