In Brief Authority Part 33

"I don't mean here. I mean the sack that's inside your coach."

"Ruby, my dear," interposed her mother, "you mustn't be so inquisitive.

It's very rude."

"I know he has got a sack there, Mummy," insisted Ruby, "and I do want to know what he's got in it."

"Hear me rag my precious brother-in-law," said Clarence aside to Lady Mus...o...b... "A sack, eh?" he said aloud. "What do you bring a sack out to lunch for--sc.r.a.ps?"

"For shame, Clarence!" cried Edna.

"It's not a sack, as it happens," said the Count sulkily. "It's a long bag--and what I use it for is entirely my own business."

"I don't know so much about that," retorted Clarence. "With such a lot of plate in the Palace!"

"Clarence!" cried Edna again. "This is too outrageous of you!"

"Much!" put in Lady Mus...o...b... "As if the Count couldn't bring his clubs with him if he's going on to golf somewhere!" she said to Clarence in an undertone. "And of course he'd want a very long case for them! You really _must_ behave more decently!"

"I mean having this out with the beggar," he replied. "Count, her ladys.h.i.+p suggests that you may have golf clubs in that bag of yours. Is that so?"

"And if I have," said the Count. "Why shouldn't I?"

"Because you don't play golf. No one does here--now, and I'll take my oath you can't tell a bra.s.sey from a putter. You never owned a set of clubs in your life!"

"Really, my boy!" said King Sidney nervously. "A scene like this! Before our guests! It won't _do_, you know. Drop it!"

"Yes," said Lady Mus...o...b.., laying her pretty but slightly over-manicured fingers on Clarence's sleeve. "You're only making everybody uncomfortable. Talk to me instead!"

"Presently," he said. "If you really have got golf clubs, Count, I should like to have a look at them after lunch."

"I never said I had got those things," replied the Count, with a wonderful command over his temper. "And if you want to know what _is_ in the bag, I don't mind telling you--only a few pumpkins from my own gardens."

"You mean to say you make such pets of your bally pumpkins that you take 'em out driving with you? That's such a likely story!"

"Clarence," said the Queen, "I will not have poor Ruprecht badgered like this. If he chooses to carry pumpkins with him--as we do gold sometimes--and distribute them to deserving persons, it is so much the more to his credit."

"He'd get 'em buzzed back at his head pretty soon, if he did!" replied the impenitent Clarence. "He's not exactly the object of general adoration in these parts, as he jolly well knows.... Anything upset you, Marchioness?" he inquired of Lady Mus...o...b.., who was giggling with a quite un-peeress-like lack of restraint.

"Nothing," she said faintly. "Only the--the pumpkins. You really are _rather_ a funny Royal Family, you know!"

"I'm sorry to make myself unpleasant, Mater," said Clarence, returning to the charge. "But I can't swallow those pumpkins. I want the sack brought in so that we can satisfy ourselves what there _is_ in it." The Court Chamberlain, in the hope that the contents, whatever they might be, would at least serve to compromise the Count, instantly despatched one of the pages to fetch the bag.

"Baron," said the Queen angrily, "it is for Us to give orders--not you!"

"Your Majesty must pardon my presumption," he said, as the pages had already obeyed him. "I was merely carrying out the wishes of His Royal Highness the Crown Prince."

"I shall die if this goes on much longer! I _know_ I shall!" gasped Lady Mus...o...b...

"Ha!" cried Clarence, as the pages staggered in with a huge distended sack. "Leave it alone, I'll open it myself."

"Surely not without asking the owner's permission?" said the d.u.c.h.ess, who had hitherto witnessed the scene in silent and dignified amazement.

"You can open it if you like!" said the Count, with a confident smile.

"And then you will see what a fuss you have made about nothing."

Clarence cut the cord, and opened the sack. The moment he did so his jaw fell. "I own up," he said. "I was wrong. They _are_ pumpkins!"

"And if you are a gentleman, Clarence," cried Edna, "you will apologise to Ruprecht at once!"

"There may be something else underneath," he said, lifting a pumpkin suspiciously in both hands. "Hullo! My hat! What's this I've got hold of?" he exclaimed, as the vegetable suddenly developed, the moment it was clear of the sack, into one of the chubbiest of the royal pages.

"Very odd!" he remarked, as he set the boy down. "Let's have the lot out." He tilted the sack, and as each pumpkin rolled out upon the sardonyx pavement, a bewildered page sprang up in its stead.

"Quite a clever trick!" said Lady Mus...o...b... "Even Maskelyne and Devant couldn't beat that!"

"After all, it wasn't so very much of a change!" was Ruby's comment.

"What do you boys mean by playing at being pumpkins in this way?"

demanded King Sidney. "I must have an explanation of this. Speak out, one of you!"

"If it please you, sire," said the first page, sinking on one knee, "When His Excellency the Count arrived he invited us to get inside the sack, at the bottom of which he told us we should find sweetmeats. And we crawled in--and I don't remember any more till I fell out just now."

"Just count these boys, Baron, will you?" said the King. "The whole dozen correct? Good. And now, sir," he added, turning to the Count, "I should like to hear what _you_ have got to say."

"Allow me, sire," interrupted Marshal Federhelm, as Count Ruprecht seemed content to smile blandly. "His Excellency no doubt intended to afford your Majesties a little harmless diversion."

"That was all," said the Count. "This is a magic sack which has the property of turning anything inside it into whatever its owner wishes. I thought it might amuse you."

"Liar!" struck in Clarence. "You wouldn't have said a word about it but for Ruby! You meant to take those pumpkins--I mean _pages_--away with you. You _know_ you did! I don't know what the Guv'nor and Mater think of it--but I consider myself it was a confounded liberty!"

"Well, well," said the King, "it was a mistake no doubt. But there's been no harm done, so perhaps we'd better leave it at that--for the present, you know, for the present."

But the Court Chamberlain could not allow such an opportunity to escape him. "Forgive me, sire," he said eagerly, "but your Majesties are evidently unacquainted with his Excellency's family history. The motive for his indiscretion will perhaps be better understood when I mention that his parents' t.i.tle was formerly Bubenfresser, and that they were executed by command of the late King as being notorious ogres."

"So _that_ was his game, was it?" cried Clarence. "Bagged our pages, meaning to gobble 'em up when he got 'em home! Am I to have an Ogre for a brother-in-law?"

At this there was a general cry of horror.

"Marshal," said the King, "you must have known all about this--and you gave that fellow an excellent character!"

"I had no reason to believe otherwise, sire," replied the ex-Regent smoothly. "He had been brought up as a strict vegetarian, and I cannot think that, if he had not acquired a taste for meat at your Majesty's table, he would ever have developed these--er--hereditary proclivities."

"He hasn't developed them!" declared Edna. "It's false! Ruprecht, deny it! Tell them you are no Ogre!"

"Really, ma'am," said the d.u.c.h.ess to Queen Selina, "I must ask your permission to leave the table. I don't feel as if I ought to be present at a family dispute of this intimate nature."

"Pray don't go, my dear d.u.c.h.ess!" the Queen implored her. "Not till you've heard what the Count has to say."

The Count rose and folded his arms in proud defiance. "I'm not an Ogre,"