yellow halberdiers in his saffron robes, wiping his forehead with a
handkerchief. After all, placed as he was, he had a good deal to say
on the matter.

"Welcome, West Kensington," said the King. "I have long wished to see
you touching that matter of the Hammersmith land to the south of the
Rowton House. Will you hold it feudally from the Provost of
Hammersmith? You have only to do him homage by putting his left arm
in his overcoat and then marching home in state."

"No, your Majesty; I'd rather not," said the Provost of West
Kensington, who was a pale young man with a fair moustache and
whiskers, who kept a successful dairy.

The King struck him heartily on the shoulder.

"The fierce old West Kensington blood," he said; "they are not wise
who ask it to do homage."

Then he glanced again round the room. It was full of a roaring sunset
of colour, and he enjoyed the sight, possible to so few artists--the
sight of his own dreams moving and blazing before him. In the
foreground the yellow of the West Kensington liveries outlined itself
against the dark blue draperies of South Kensington. The crests of
these again brightened suddenly into green as the almost woodland
colours of Bayswater rose behind them. And over and behind all, the
great purple plumes of North Kensington showed almost funereal and
black.

"There is something lacking," said the King--"something lacking. What
can--Ah, there it is! there it is!"

In the doorway had appeared a new figure, a herald in flaming red. He
cried in a loud but unemotional voice--

"The Lord High Provost of Notting Hill desires an audience."

CHAPTER III--_Enter a Lunatic_

The King of the Fairies, who was, it is to be presumed, the godfather
of King Auberon, must have been very favourable on this particular day
to his fantastic godchild, for with the entrance of the guard of the
Provost of Notting Hill there was a certain more or less inexplicable
addition to his delight. The wretched navvies and sandwich-men who
carried the colours of Bayswater or South Kensington, engaged merely
for the day to satisfy the Royal hobby, slouched into the room with a
comparatively hang-dog air, and a great part of the King's
intellectual pleasure consisted in the contrast between the arrogance
of their swords and feathers and the meek misery of their faces. But
these Notting Hill halberdiers in their red tunics belted with gold
had the air rather of an absurd gravity. They seemed,