All morning long and in the
intervals between tutors he had tried to catch Miss Braithwaite's eye.

Except for the most ordinary civilities, she had refused to look in his
direction. She was correcting an essay in English on Mr. Gladstone,
with a blue pencil, and putting in blue commas every here and there. The
Crown Prince was amazingly weak in commas. When she was all through, she
piled the sheets together and wrote a word on the first page. It might
have been "good." On the other hand, it could easily have been "poor."
The motions of the hand are similar.

At last; in desperation, the Crown Prince deliberately broke off the
point of his pencil, and went to the desk where Miss Braithwaite sat,
monarch of the American pencil-sharpener which was the beloved of his
heart.

"Again!" said Miss Braithwaite shortly. And raised her eyebrows.

"It's a very soft pencil," explained the Crown Prince. "When I press
down on it, it--it busts."

"It what?"

"It busts--breaks." Evidently the English people were not familiar with
this new and fascinating American word.

He cast a casual glance toward Mr. Gladstone. The word was certainly
"poor." Suddenly a sense of injustice began to rise in him. He had
worked rather hard over Mr. Gladstone. He had done so because he knew
that Miss Braithwaite considered him the greatest man since Jesus
Christ, and even the Christ had not written "The Influence of Authority
in Matters of Opinion."

The injustice went to his eyes and made him blink. He had apologized for
yesterday, and explained fully. It was not fair. As to commas, anybody
could put in enough commas.

The French tutor was standing near a photograph of Hedwig, and
pretending not to look at it. Prince Ferdinand William Otto had a
suspicion that the tutor was in love with Hedwig. On one occasion, when
she had entered unexpectedly, he had certainly given out the sentence,
"Ce dragon etait le vieux serpent, la princesse," instead of "Ce dragon
etait le vieux serpent, le roi."

Prince Ferdinand William Otto did not like the French tutor. His being
silly about Hedwig was not the reason. Even Nikky had that trouble,
and once, when they were all riding together, had said, "Canter on the
snaffle, trot on the curb," when he meant exactly the opposite. It was
not that. Part of it was because of his legs, which were inclined to
knock at the knees. Mostly it was his eyes, which protruded. "When he
reads my French exercises," he complai