situation was that Mr. and Mrs. King lived in a modest, vine-covered
little house that could have been lost in the servants' quarters at
Blitherwood. Especially aggravating, too, was the attitude of the
Kings. They were really nobodies, so to speak, and yet they blithely
called their royal guest "Bobby" and allowed him to fetch and carry
for their women-folk quite as if he were an ordinary whipper-snapper
up from the city to spend the week-end.

The remark with which Mr. Blithers introduces this chapter was in
response to an oft-repeated declaration made by his wife in the shade
of the red, white and blue awning of the terrace overlooking, from
its despotic heights, the modest red roof of the King villa in the
valley below. Mrs. Blithers merely had stated--but over and over
again--that money couldn't buy everything in the world, referring
directly to social eminence and indirectly to their secret ambition
to capture a Prince of the royal blood for their daughter Maud. She
had prefaced this opinion, however, with the exceedingly irritating
insinuation that Mr. Blithers was not in his right mind when he
proposed inviting the Prince to spend a few weeks at Blitherwood,
provided the young man could cut short his visit in the home of Mr.
and Mrs. King, who, he had asseverated, were not in a position to
entertain royalty as royalty was in the habit of being entertained.

Long experience had taught Mr. Blithers to read the lip and eye
language with some degree of certainty, so by watching his wife's
indignant face closely he was able to tell when she was succumbing to
reason. He was a burly, domineering person who reasoned for every one
within range of his voice, and it was only when his wife became
coldly sarcastic that he closed his ears and boomed his opinions into
her very teeth, so to say, joyfully overwhelming her with facts which