The Princess Elopes Part 23

"But we can't accept just a story as proof," the duke said. "It isn't as if he were one of the people. It wouldn't matter then. But it's a future prince. Let us go slow."

"Yes, let us go slow," repeated the prince, brus.h.i.+ng his damp forehead.

"Wait a moment!" said Colonel Arnheim, stepping forward. "Only one thing will prove his ident.i.ty to me; not all the papers in the world can do it."

"What do you know?" cried the prince, bewildered.

"Something I have not dared tell till this moment,"--miserably.

"Curse it, you are keeping us waiting!" The duke kicked about the shattered bits of porcelain.

"I used to play with the--the young prince," began Arnheim. "Your Highness will recollect that I did." Arnheim went over to Max. "Take off your coat." Max did so, wondering. "Roll up your sleeve." Again Max obeyed, and his wonder grew. "See!" cried the colonel in a high, unnatural voice, due to his unusual excitement. "Oh, there can be no doubt! It is your son!"

The duke and the prince b.u.mped against each other in their mad rush to inspect Max's arm. Arnheim's finger rested upon the peculiar scar I have mentioned.

"Lord help us, it's your wine-case brand!" gasped the duke.

"My wine case!" The prince was almost on the verge of tears.

The girl sat perfectly quiet.

"Explain, explain!" said Max.

"Yes, yes! How did this come?--put there?" spluttered the prince.

"Your Highness, we--your son--we were playing in the wine-cellars that day," stammered the unhappy Arnheim. "I saw . . . the hot iron . . .

I was a boy of no more than five . . . I branded the prince on the arm. He cried so that I was frightened and ran and hid. When I went to look for him he was gone. Oh, I know; it is your son."

"I'll take your word for it, Colonel!" cried the prince. "I said from the first that he wasn't bad-looking. Didn't I, Princess?" He then turned embarra.s.sedly toward Max and timidly held out his hand. That was as near sentiment as ever the father and the son came, but it was genuine. "Ho, steward! Hans, you rascal, where are you?"

The steward presently entered, shading his eyes.

"Your Highness called?"

"That I did. That's Max come home!"

"Little Max?"

"Little Max. Now, candles, and march yourself to the packing-cellars.

Off with you!" The happy old man slapped the duke on the shoulder.

"I've an idea, Josef."

"What is it?" asked the duke, also very well pleased with events.

"I'll tell you all about it when we get into the cellar." But the nod toward the girl and the nod toward Max was a liberal education.

"I am pardoned?" said Arnheim.

"Pardoned? My boy, if I had an army I would make you a general!"

roared the prince. "Come along, Josef. And you, Arnheim! You troopers, out of here, every one of you, and leave these two young persons alone!"

And out of the various doors the little company departed, leaving the princess and Max alone.

Ah, how everything was changed! thought Max, as he let down his sleeve and b.u.t.toned his cuff. A prince! He was a prince; he, Max Scharfenstein, cow-boy, quarter-back, trooper, doctor, was a prince!

If it was a dream, he was going to box the ears of the bell-boy who woke him up. But it wasn't a dream; he knew it wasn't. The girl yonder didn't dissolve into mist and disappear; she was living, living.

He had now the right to love any one he chose, and he did choose to love this beautiful girl, who, with lowered eyes, was nervously plucking the ends of the pillow ta.s.sel. It was all changed for her, too.

"Princess!" he said a bit brokenly.

"I am called Gretchen by my friends,"--with a boldness that only half-disguised her real timidity. What would he do, this big, handsome fellow, who had turned out to be a prince, fairy-tale wise?

"Gretchen? I like that better than Hildegarde; it is less formal.

Well, then, Gretchen, I can't explain it, but this new order of things has given me a tremendous backbone." He crossed the room to her side.

"You will not wed my--my father?"

"Never in all this world!"--slipping around the table, her eyes dim like the bloom on the grape. She ought not to be afraid of him, but she was.

"But I--"

"You have known me only four days," she whispered faintly. "You can not know your mind."

"Oh, when one is a prince,"--laughing,--"it takes no time at all. I love you. I knew it was going to be when you looked around in old Bauer's smithy."

"Did I look around?"--innocently.

"You certainly did, for I looked around and saw you."

They paused. (There is no pastime quite like it.)

"But they say that I am wild like a young horse." (Love is always finding some argument which he wishes to have knocked under.)

"Not to me,"--ardently. "You may ride a bicycle every day, if you wish."

"I'd rather have an automobile,"--drolly.

"An airs.h.i.+p, if money will buy it!"

"They say--my uncle says--that I am not capable of loving anything."

"What do I care what they say? Will you be my wife?"

"Give me a week to think it over."

"No."

(She liked that!)

"A day, then?"