ld have died for her!

Mr. Thorpe came home a little late. He kissed Bobby twelve times, and
one to grow on. He shook hands absently with the visitor, and gave
the Fraulein the evening paper--an extravagance on which he insisted,
although one could read the news for nothing by going to the cafe on the
corner. Then he drew his wife aside.

"Look here!" he said. "Don't tell Bobby--no use exciting him, and of
course it's not our funeral anyhow but there's a report that the Crown
Prince has been kidnapped. And that's not all. The old King is dying!"

"How terrible!"

"Worse than that. The old King gone and no Crown Prince! It may mean
almost any sort of trouble! I've closed up at the Park for the night."
His arm around his wife, he looked through the doorway to where Bobby
and Ferdinand were counting the candles. "It's made me think pretty
hard," he said. "Bobby mustn't go around alone the way he's been doing.
All Americans here are considered millionaires. If the Crown Prince
could go, think how easy--"

His arm tightened around his wife, and together they went in to
the birthday feast. Ferdinand William Otto was hungry. He ate
eagerly--chicken, fruit compote, potato salad--again shades of the Court
physicians, who fed him at night a balanced ration of milk, egg, and
zwieback! Bobby also ate busily, and conversation languished.

Then the moment came when, the first cravings appeased, they sat back in
their chairs while Pepy cleared the table and brought in a knife to cut
the cake. Mr. Thorpe had excused himself for a moment. Now he came back,
with a bottle wrapped in a newspaper, and sat down again.

"I thought," he said, "as this is a real occasion, not exactly Robert's
coming of age, but marking his arrival at years of discretion, the
period when he ceases to be a small boy and becomes a big one, we might
drink a toast to it."

"Robert!" objected the big boy's mother.

"A teaspoonful each, honey," he begged. "It changes it from a mere
supper to a festivity."

He poured a few drops of wine into the children's glasses, and filled
them up with water. Then he filled the others, and sat smiling, this big
young man, who had brought his loved ones across the sea, and was trying
to make them happy up a flight of stone stairs, above a concierge's
bureau that smelled of garlic.

"First," he said, "I believe it is customary to toast the King. Friends,
I give you the good King and brave soldier, Ferdinand of Livonia."