played the limit. You've got a job lot of four
dukes under the hammer; of four nationalities; all sound in the wind and
limb and pedigree, all bankrupt and in debt up to the ears. They come
high, but we can afford it. Come, Aleck, don't delay any longer, don't
keep up the suspense: take the whole lay-out, and leave the girls to
choose!"

Aleck had been smiling blandly and contentedly all through this
arraignment of her marriage policy, a pleasant light, as of triumph with
perhaps a nice surprise peeping out through it, rose in her eyes, and
she said, as calmly as she could:

"Sally, what would you say to--ROYALTY?"

Prodigious! Poor man, it knocked him silly, and he fell over the
garboard-strake and barked his shin on the cat-heads. He was dizzy for a
moment, then he gathered himself up and limped over and sat down by
his wife and beamed his old-time admiration and affection upon her in
floods, out of his bleary eyes.

"By George!" he said, fervently, "Aleck, you ARE great--the greatest
woman in the whole earth! I can't ever learn the whole size of you.
I can't ever learn the immeasurable deeps of you. Here I've been
considering myself qualified to criticize your game. _I!_ Why, if I had
stopped to think, I'd have known you had a lone hand up your sleeve.
Now, dear heart, I'm all red-hot impatience--tell me about it!"

The flattered and happy woman put her lips to his ear and whispered
a princely name. It made him catch his breath, it lit his face with
exultation.

"Land!" he said, "it's a stunning catch! He's got a gambling-hall, and
a graveyard, and a bishop, and a cathedral--all his very own. And all
gilt-edged five-hundred-per-cent. stock, every detail of it; the tidiest
little property in Europe; and that graveyard--it's the selectest in
the world: none but suicides admitted; YES, sir, and the free-list
suspended, too, ALL the time. There isn't much land in the principality,
but there's enough: eight hundred acres in the graveyard and forty-two
outside. It's a SOVEREIGNTY--that's the main thing; LAND'S nothing.
There's plenty land, Sahara's drugged with it."

Aleck glowed; she was profoundly happy. She said:

"Think of it, Sally--it is a family that has never married outside the
Royal and Imperial Houses of Europe: our grandchildren will sit upon
thrones!"

"True as you live, Aleck--and bear scepters, too; and handle them as
naturally and nonchantly as I handle a yardstick. It's a grand catch,
Aleck. H