nk of you sitting there in that common prison
all those ten days with everybody looking for you--looking, looking, and
not daring to say one word--so afraid at what you had done--oh, that is
marvelous! That is to be a King! That is power!"

Charlotte had become very attentive to her lover's praise. "You think
they were really afraid, then?" she inquired, "afraid that it should be
known."

"You ask them!" replied Fritz, "and see if they do not all cry 'Hush'!"

And then in his usual abrupt way he returned to matters more personal to
himself.

"Well, what are you going to say to me? For the last hour I have been
asking you to marry me, and you have said nothing; only just 'wriggle,
wriggle,' talking off on to something else."

"Wriggling is one way of wrestling," said Charlotte. Her eye played
mischief as she spoke.

"Just waggling the tongue!" retorted Fritz with genial scorn. "Throw a
man with that?--you cannot throw me!"

"But I must throw somebody, or else I shall not be qualified. The women
of that wonderful country of yours would look down on me."

"Throw me!" The Prince opened his arms, smiling. "I will let you!" he
said.

"And despise me afterwards! No, Mr. Schnapp-dragon, I shall choose my
own man, and throw him in my own way."

"And if you succeed?"

"Then--yes, then I will marry you."

"And if you fail?"

"Then I won't."

"H'm!" observed the Prince in easy-going tones, "you must have been very
sure of him before you would say that!"

Charlotte opened her mouth to rebuke that brazen remark; and then shut
it again.

"When do you do it?" went on Fritz, equable as ever. "Before I go?"

Charlotte pretended to temporize. "Well, perhaps to-morrow," said she.

And sure enough, to-morrow it was.

II

Nobody in Jingalo knows to this day what finally induced the Prime
Minister to concede so unexpectedly that preliminary point of vantage--a
mere foothold among the interstices of the ministerial program--which
the Women Chartists had so long and vainly striven for. What use they
made of the opportunity thus accorded has now become a matter of
history: we need not go into it here.

No royal message to ministers in Council assembled worked that miracle;
for, as we shall see in another chapter, the King's mind was destined at
this point to be suddenly distracted in quite other ways; and when he
was again able to turn his attention anywhere but to himself he found
that and other matters which had