!"

"Bilgewater, I am the late Dauphin!"

You bet you, Jim and me stared this time. Then the duke says:

"You are what?"

"Yes, my friend, it is too true--your eyes is lookin' at this very
moment on the pore disappeared Dauphin, Looy the Seventeen, son of
Looy the Sixteen and Marry Antonette."

"You! At your age! No! You mean you're the late Charlemagne; you must
be six or seven hundred years old, at the very least."

"Trouble has done it, Bilgewater, trouble has done it; trouble has
brung these gray hairs and this premature balditude. Yes, gentlemen,
you see before you, in blue jeans and misery, the wanderin', exiled,
trampled-on, and sufferin' rightful King of France."

Well, he cried and took on so that me and Jim didn't know hardly what
to do, we was so sorry--and so glad and proud we'd got him with us,
too. So we set in, like we done before with the duke, and tried to
comfort _him._ But he said it warn't no use, nothing but to be dead
and done with it all could do him any good; though he said it often
made him feel easier and better for a while if people treated him
according to his rights, and got down on one knee to speak to him, and
always called him "Your Majesty," and waited on him first at meals,
and didn't set down in his presence till he asked them. So Jim and me
set to majestying him, and doing this and that and t'other for him,
and standing up till he told us we might set down. This done him heaps
of good, and so he got cheerful and comfortable. But the duke kind of
soured on him, and didn't look a bit satisfied with the way things was
going; still, the king acted real friendly towards him, and said the
duke's great-grandfather and all the other Dukes of Bilgewater was a
good deal thought of by _his_ father, and was allowed to come to the
palace considerable; but the duke stayed huffy a good while, till by
and by the king says:

"Like as not we got to be together a blamed long time on this h-yer
raft, Bilgewater, and so what's the use o' your bein' sour? It 'll
only make things oncomfortable. It ain't my fault I warn't born a
duke, it ain't your fault you warn't born a king--so what's the use to
worry? Make the best o' things the way you find 'em, says I--that's my
motto. This ain't no bad thing that we've struck here--plenty grub and
an easy life--come, give us your hand, duke, and le's all be friends."

The duke done it, and Jim and me was pretty glad to see it. It took
away all the uncomfort