can here. Suppose we try it."
"Why can't we go out? I've always gone before."
"Well," Nikky temporized, "they've made a rule. They make a good many
rules, you know. But they said nothing about the roof."
"The roof!"
"The roof. The thing that covers us and keeps out the weather. The roof,
Highness." Nikky alternated between formality and the other extreme with
the boy.
"It slants, doesn't it?" observed his Highness doubtfully.
"Part of it is quite flat. We can take a ball up there, and get some
exercise while we're about it."
As a matter of fact, Nikky was not altogether unselfish. He would visit
the roof again, where for terrible, wonderful moments he had held Hedwig
in his arms. On a pilgrimage, indeed, like that of the Crown Prince to
Etzel, Nikky would visit his shrine.
So they went to the roof. They went through silent corridors, past quiet
rooms where the suite waited and spoke in whispers, past the very door
of the chamber where the Council sat in session, and where reports were
coming in, hour by hour, as to the condition of things outside. Past
the apartment of the Archduchess Annunciata, where Hilda, released from
lessons, was trying the effect of jet earrings against her white skin,
and the Archduchess herself was sitting by her fire, and contemplating
the necessity for flight. In her closet was a small bag, already
packed in case of necessity. Indeed, more persons than the Archduchess
Annunciata had so prepared. Miss Braithwaite, for instance, had spent a
part of the night over a traveling-case containing a small boy's outfit,
and had wept as she worked, which was the reason for her headache.
The roof proved quite wonderful. One could see the streets crowded with
people, could hear the soft blare of distant horns.
"The Scenic Railway is in that direction," observed the Crown Prince,
leaning on the balustrade. "If there were no buildings we could see it."
"Right here," Nikky was saying to himself. "At this very spot. She held
out her arms, and I--"
"It looks very interesting," said Prince Ferdinand William Otto. "Of
course we can't see the costumes, but it is better than nothing."
"I kissed her," Nikky was thinking, his heart swelling under his very
best tunic. "Her head was on my breast, and I kissed her. Last of all,
I kissed her eyes--her lovely eyes."
"If I fell off here," observed the Crown Prince in a meditative voice,
"I would be smashed to a jelly, like the child at the Cr
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