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Now deep and dark and terrible as was Terry’s hatred for the polo costume, it was as love and loyalty compared with his detestation of the Little Lord Fauntleroy suit, with its velvet jacket, velvet breeches, buckled slippers and lace collar. He protested. He wailed, while from beyond the door Josephus wailed with him—and furiously started to chew Humberstone’s respectable slippers.

With a considerable drop in tenderness, Bessie snarled, “Now, we’ll have no more out of you! Good Lord! I work myself to the bone trying to give you a chance in life! I work and slave to have you meet the real bon ton, like kings and queens, and not a lot of these Hollywood bums, and then you won’t act nice like I tell you to! Terry Tait, I haven’t punished you for some time, but unless you put on the nice Fauntleroy suit, and act nice and gentlemanly, why, I’ll just nachly snatch you bald-headed, jhear me?” In the case of Mr. Rabbit Benescoten Tait, Terry had seen his mother’s rare ability to snatch people bald-headed and, sobbing slightly, he took off the honest boy-town tweed suit he was wearing and began to force himself into the abomination of lace and black velvet.

Out of the door, down the corridor, about to meet a queen—about to meet the first woman who might prove to be her own equal—marched Mrs. T. Benescoten Tait.

Bessie had, in a week of London, learned that really cultured and cosmopolitan people called candy “sweets,” called trolley cars “trams,” called hotel clerks “reception clerks,” called six bits “three bob,” and, most especially, called an elevator a “lift. ” Thus it was no common and uneducated elevator but an exotic lift that they took, and it was to a lift attendant that Bessie murmured charmingly, with just a touch of a Mechanicville French accent, “We’ll stop at the catriem tage—oh, how fonny!—I mean the fourt’ floor, please. ”

“Very sorry, madame, but that floor is reserved. I am not permitted to stop there. ”

“Say, don’t you suppose I know it’s reserved for the Slovarian royal party? It’s them I’m going to see!”

The lift attendant had stopped the lift (or elevator or ascenseur) just below the fourth floor. He was a bright lift boy of sixty-five. He said unhappily, “I’m sorry, madame, but I’m not permitted to let anyone off on the fourth floor unless they are recognized or are accompanied by someone from the royal entourage. ”

“Rats! I tell you they’re expecting me! Look at this!”

THIS was a pound note. The lift attendant looked on it regretfully, but he sighed. “Very sorry, madame—much as my position is worth,” and shot the lift down to the ground floor.

“All right, then; you can take us back to the fifth floor,” said Bessie.

Terry turned toward their suite, but his mother snapped, “Where do you think you’re going?” and marched him toward the onyx-and-crystal front staircase from their floor down to the fourth, the royal floor.

As they elegantly emerged on the sacred corridor, they were confronted by one of the largest, tallest, most ruddy-faced bobbies in the entire British police force. He too was sorry, and he too explained that he could not let strangers approach Their Majesties.

Bessie wasted no words on so rude a fellow. She marched upstairs again. “If they think they can stop ME! There’s nothing I won’t do for the sake of my poor little son!” she moaned and, grabbing the poor little son, she marched him to the east end of their corridor.

Now at the east end Bessie had noted a flight of slate-tread stairs, presumably intended for servants and as a fire escape.

At the foot of the stairs stood the same bobby whom she had just met.

“Now then! ‘Ave I got to run you in?” he growled.

With one proud glance she marched back upstairs.

For half an hour she cried on her bed, raging at the tyrants who insulted a mother who was trying to give her son a chance to get along in the world. Then she rose, powdered, and stalked into Terry’s room, where he had already changed from the nice Fauntleroy suit into khaki shirt and shorts. He sat behind a couch, arguing with Josephus.