ned once to Hedwig, "he waves them
around like an ant's."

He and Hedwig usually spoke English together. Like most royalties, they
had been raised on languages. It was as much as one's brains were worth,
sometimes, to try to follow them as they leaped from grammar to grammar.

"Like an aunt's?" inquired Hedwig, mystified.

"An ant's. They have eyes on the ends of their feelers, you know."

But Miss Braithwaite, overhearing, had said that ants have no eyes at
all. She had no imagination.

His taste of liberty had spoiled the Crown Prince for work. Instead of
conjugating a French verb, he made a sketch of the Scenic Railway. He
drew the little car, and two heads looking over the edge, with a sort of
porcupine effect of hairs standing straight up.

"Otto!" said Miss Braithwaite sternly.

Miss Braithwaite did not say "sir" to him or "Your Royal Highness," like
the tutors. She had taken him from the arms of his mother when he was a
baby, and had taught a succession of nurses how to fix his bottles,
and made them raise the windows when he slept--which was heresy in that
country, and was brought up for discussion in the Parliament. When it
came time for his first tooth, and he was wickedly fretful, and the
doctors had a consultation over him, it was Miss Braithwaite who had
ignored everything they said, and rubbed the tooth through with her
silver thimble. Boiled first, of course.

And when one has cut a Royal Highness's first tooth, and broken him of
sucking his thumb, and held a cold buttered knife against his bruises
to prevent their discoloring, one does get out of the way of being very
formal with him.

"Otto!" said Miss Braithwaite sternly.

So he went to work in earnest. He worked at a big desk, which had been
his father's. As a matter of fact, everything in the room was too big
for him. It had not occurred to any one to make any concessions to his
size. He went through life, one may say, with his legs dangling, or
standing on tiptoe to see things.

The suite had been his father's before him. Even the heavy old rug had
been worn shabby by the scuffing of his father's feet. On the wall there
hung a picture his father had drawn. It was of a yacht in full sail.
Prince Hubert had been fifteen when he drew it, and was contemplating
abandoning his princely career and running away to be a pirate. As a
matter of fact, the yacht boasted the black flag, as Otto knew quite
well. Nikky had discover it. But none of the