down between his legs, Mr. Quin answered
modestly--

"I am not worthy. I cannot reasonably claim to equal the great men who
have previously swayed the sceptre of Britain. Perhaps the only
peculiarity that I can claim is that I am probably the first monarch
that ever spoke out his soul to the people of England with his head
and body in this position. This may in some sense give me, to quote a
poem that I wrote in my youth--

A nobler office on the earth
Than valour, power of brain, or birth
Could give the warrior kings of old.

The intellect clarified by this posture--"

Lambert and Barker made a kind of rush at him.

"Don't you understand?" cried Lambert. "It's not a joke. They've
really made you King. By gosh! they must have rum taste."

"The great Bishops of the Middle Ages," said Quin, kicking his legs in
the air, as he was dragged up more or less upside down, "were in the
habit of refusing the honour of election three times and then
accepting it. A mere matter of detail separates me from those great
men. I will accept the post three times and refuse it afterwards. Oh!
I will toil for you, my faithful people! You shall have a banquet of
humour."

By this time he had been landed the right way up, and the two men were
still trying in vain to impress him with the gravity of the situation.

"Did you not tell me, Wilfrid Lambert," he said, "that I should be of
more public value if I adopted a more popular form of humour? And when
should a popular form of humour be more firmly riveted upon me than
now, when I have become the darling of a whole people? Officer," he
continued, addressing the startled messenger, "are there no ceremonies
to celebrate my entry into the city?"

"Ceremonies," began the official, with embarrassment, "have been more
or less neglected for some little time, and--"

Auberon Quin began gradually to take off his coat.

"All ceremony," he said, "consists in the reversal of the obvious.
Thus men, when they wish to be priests or judges, dress up like women.
Kindly help me on with this coat." And he held it out.

"But, your Majesty," said the officer, after a moment's bewilderment
and manipulation, "you're putting it on with the tails in front."

"The reversal of the obvious," said the King, calmly, "is as near as
we can come to ritual with our imperfect apparatus. Lead on."

The rest of that afternoon and evening was to Barker and Lambert a
nightmare, which they could not properly realise