of their mothers regarded him with a
gloating admiration; they felt that the beach was more glorious for his
royal presence.

About forty yards behind him came a companion figure, his equerry the
Baron von Habelschwert, a stout, pig-eyed, snub-nosed man of forty-five
who walked with the stiffness of a ramrod of the best Bessemer steel.
His legs were, unfortunately, rather short, and since the lower part of
his body was of a fine protuberant rotundity which the breadth of his
shoulders and the thickness of his chest failed dismally to equal, he
displayed an uncommonly exact resemblance of a perambulating pear. He
had a rich expanse of fat cheek and a small, but dimpled, chin. He was
saved by his fierce moustache, which, upturned in the imperial fashion,
gave him the ferocious air required by his military profession and his
sentiments of a superman of the latest Prussian brand.

Happiness sat enthroned upon his brow. A passion for blacking is a
distinguishing characteristic of his military caste; and his natural love
of licking the boots of members of the many royal families of the
Fatherland was finding its full expression. In Prince Adalbert he had a
perpetual boot to lick. Sometimes indeed the boot licked him: that very
morning the prince had kicked his shins in a masterly fashion, on being
invited to wash his face for the day. The baron bore it very well.

His clothes fitted him with an extreme, but somewhat unfortunate,
military tightness. They were of an unpleasant greenish tint which did
not match the green Homberg hat he wore. In his right hand he carried a
short cane and yellow gloves. The morning was hot; his boots were patent
leather. Diffusing an agreeable odour of pomatum on the breeze, he
walked with the air of one taking his ease in a conquered country, for he
was one of the gallant German war-party, and he looked forward with
touching certainty to the day when the mailed fist of his imperial master
should sweep England with fire and sword from sea to sea. He often
talked in a gloating fashion of that great day to his young charge.
Possibly that was one of the reasons which induced Prince Adalbert of
Lippe-Schweidnitz to make so free with the castles and persons of the
children of the so-soon-to-be-subjugated English.

The ogres of the sands having disappeared down the beach, the children
repaired the damage to their castles and once more played in peace. That
afternoon there was another roya