se you take me
into partnership. We could all three work together, except when it is
necessary to climb cisterns. Then I'd stay round the nearest corner.
What do you think?"

"I'd like to; but I must ask the Queen first."

"I might be some help."

"You would," said Phillips. "I'm not clever, you know. I wish I was.
And, of course, the Queen is very young."

"I'm quite old," said Gorman, "and amazingly clever."

"I can see that. I saw it directly I met you."

"Then you'd better let me help. We'll see if we can't catch Smith at
some little game."

CHAPTER XV

There is no doubt that the Donovans owed their comfort on Salissa very
largely to Smith, the ship's steward, who had entered their service at
the last moment, and, as it seemed, accidentally.

Donovan would never have achieved the rest and quiet he desired
without Smith. Advocates of the simple life may say what they like;
but a man like Donovan would have lived in a condition of perpetual
worry and annoyance if he had been obliged to go foraging for such
things as milk and eggs; if it had been his business to chop up
wood and light the kitchen fire. He would not have liked cleaning
his own boots or sweeping up the cigar ends and tobacco ash with
which he strewed the floors of the palace. He would not have slept
well at night in a bed that he made himself. He would have gone
without shaving most days--thereby becoming uncomfortable and most
unsightly--if he had been dependent on his own exertions for a supply
of hot water and a properly stropped razor.

His daughter would have made a poor queen if it had fallen to her lot
to cook meals for herself and her father, if she had spent a morning
every week at a wash-tub and another morning with an iron in her
hand. There were no labour-saving devices in the palace. King Otto had
a remarkable taste for fantastic architecture; but it had not occurred
to him to run hot and cold water through his house or to have a lift
between the kitchen and the upper storeys. There was not even in the
whole palace a single sink in which a plate could conveniently be
washed. It is impossible to be a queen in any real and proper sense
if you have to spend hours every day doing the work of a kitchen-maid.
Queens, and indeed all members of aristocracies, ought to be
occupied with thoughts of great and splendid things, wide schemes of
philanthropy, sage counsels for the elevating of the masses. But the
human mind will not w