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“Now look here, young man, I’m going out, and if you stir one foot out of this suite, you and me will have a little talk this evening, jhear me!”

She marched out, singularly like the Fifth Cavalry on the trail of the Apaches.

Terry telephoned for Ginger. In blessed quiet and lack of maternal care, the two small boys and the one large dog became happy again. Liberally interpreting the boundaries of the suite, which Terry was not to leave, as including the corridor, they laid out the electric railway from Edinburgh (opposite Room 597) to South Africa (overlooking the canyon of the back stairs).

And while they reveled, Bessie was at the American Embassy, successively failing to see the ambassador, the counselor, the first and second secretaries, and finally, with indignation at this neglect of her Rights as an American Citizen, hearing the third secretary murmur:

“I greatly sympathize with you, but I’m afraid it would be hard to get the chief to feel that you have been insulted and that the State Department ought to cable Slovaria. Suppose some complete stranger were to come to your studio in Hollywood while Terry was making the most important scenes of a new picture, and should want to go right in-would he be admitted?”

“But that’s entirely different! Terry isn’t a stranger!”

“But he might be to the Slovarians. ”

“Well, I’ve heard a lot about how ignorant these Europeans are, but you can’t make me believe that even the Slovarians haven’t heard about Terry Tait, the King of Boy Comedians!”

The third secretary rose with a manner which was familiar to Bessie from her first job-hunting days in Los Angeles. He observed silkily, “Dreadfully sorry, but I’m afraid we can’t do a thing in this matter. But if we can help you about passports … ”

As Bessie walked disconsolately away from the Embassy she groaned, “I guess the game’s up! We ain’t going to meet any queen. My poor little boy! They won’t raise him to four grand a week, after all. And I won’t be able to buy that steam yacht! … The dirty snobs, that care more for red tape than for a mother’s heart! Say, why wouldn’t that make a swell title for Terry’s next movie after ‘His Majesty, Junior’? ‘A Mother’s Heart’!”

Terry, Ginger, and Josephus, the managers of the Edinburgh, South Africa and Peking R. R. , were repairing a wreck and gleefully counting the temporarily dead passengers beside the slaty African caverns of what would, to unenlightened adult eyes, have seemed the back stairs.

Up those crevasses crept a small boy, obviously English, a boy with black hair, a cheery nose of a cocky Irish tilt, and gray flannels. He was of Terry’s age.

“Hello!” he said.

“‘Ello yourself,” observed Ginger grandly.

“I’m going up to the top floor and I’m going to slide down all the banisters all the way down,” confided the stranger.

“You better be careful on the floor below this. Some king’s got it. There’s a lot of cops there. How’d you ever get by ’em?” demanded Terry.

“I waited till they weren’t looking, and slipped past ’em. Oh, I say, what a lovely train!”

He seemed a nice lad, and with much cordiality Terry urged, “Wouldn’t you like to play train with us?”

“Oh, I’d love it!” cried the stranger. “I say, this is ripping! I’ve run away from my family. They want me to go to parties and have my picture taken. ”

“Isn’t it fierce!” sympathized Terry.

“If you must ‘ave your picture taken,” Ginger remarked oracularly, “you just tell your old lady to take you to Gumbridge’s, on Great St. Jever Street, Whitechapel; ‘e’ll do you ‘andsome—six bob a dozen. ”

“Oh, thank you very much indeed. I’ll tell my mother. May I— would you mind if I started the train just once?”

The new boy was so enthusiastic about the signal system, he so fervently enjoyed the most sanguinary wrecks, that Ginger and Terry adopted him as a third musketeer, and Terry urged, “If you like it, come into my room. I’ve got some other things there. ”

The new boy gazed in awe at the electrical Derby race and the electrical Colosseum with the lions charmingly devouring Early Christians.

“I’ve just never SEEN such things,” he sighed.