n impossible
one, a weapon against which no Government department could stand. The
word 'Juggins,'--only think, sir, what it means! Here we have a
ridiculous, a most lamentable blunder committed by the police,
sufficient of itself to cause us the gravest embarrassment; and then to
have on the top of it all this name with its ridiculous association
rising up to confound us. We should go down as 'the Juggins Cabinet';
the word would be cried after us by every errand-boy in the street--the
Government would become impossible."

The King did his best to conceal his delight at the predicament in which
Charlotte's escapade had, by the confession of its Chief, placed the
Cabinet. This tyrannical Government, in spite of its large majority, its
strong party organization, and its bureaucratic powers, was unable to
stand up against ridicule; a mere breath, and all its false pretensions
to dignity would be exposed, and its dry bones, speciously clad in
strong armor, would rattle down into the dust.

And if he chose to use this knowledge suddenly gained, what a power it
would give him! Yes; he had only to send for Charlotte and bid her cry
'Juggins,' and that which, with so many months of anxious toil and with
threat of abdication, he had failed to bring about, would immediately
accomplish itself in other ways. But unfortunately the King was a man of
scrupulous conscience, and was bound by his ideas of what became a
monarch and a gentleman. He may have been quite mistaken in regarding as
unclean the weapon with which Heaven had supplied him; but as he did so
regard it, one must reluctantly admit that he was right to throw it
aside.

"Well," he said, when the Prime Minister had finished, "she must be made
not to tell, that's all!"

"I fear, sir, she is very determined."

"Determined to do what?"

"To serve out her sentence."

The King sat and thought for a while. He knew his Charlotte better than
the police did; and, besides that, during the past week he had quite
made up his mind that the Prefect of Police was in some matters a
blunderer. "I wonder how he tried to get her out," he meditated aloud.
"Did she send me any message?"

"Nothing direct, sir, that I know of; but I take it that her ultimatum
was also directed against any possible action on the part of your
Majesty. She was quite determined to do her full time; said indeed that
you had promised her a fortnight. What that may mean, I do not know."

"Oh, really!" crie