Truxton King | Page 6

that confounded man from Cook's had a party of twenty-two American
school-teachers and Bible students in the Castle grounds and I had to
stand on my toes outside the walls for two hours before I could get a
permit to enter. American engineers are building the new railroad;
American capital controls the telephone and electric light companies;
there are two American moving picture shows in Regengetz Circus and
an American rush hand laundry two blocks up. And you can get
Bourbon whisky anywhere. It's sickening."
"The Americans have done much for Edelweiss, sir. We don't resent
their progressiveness. They have given us modern improvements
without overthrowing ancient customs. My dear young sir, we are very
old here--and very honest. That reminds me that I should accept your
kind invitation to the Café garden. If you will bear with me for just one
moment, sir." With this polite request, the old man retired to the rear of
the shop and called out to some one upstairs. A woman's voice
answered. The brief conversation which followed was in a tongue
unknown to King.
"My niece will keep shop, sir, while I am out," Spantz explained,
taking his hat from a peg behind the door. Truxton could scarcely
restrain a smile as he glanced over his queer little old guest. He looked
eighty but was as sprightly as a man of forty. A fine companion for a
youth of twenty-six in search of adventure!

They paused near the door until the old man's niece appeared at the
back of the shop. King's first glance at the girl was merely a casual one.
His second was more or less in the nature of a stare of amazement.
A young woman of the most astounding beauty, attired in the black and
red of the Graustark middle classes, was slowly approaching from the
shadowy recesses at the end of the shop. She gave him but a cursory
glance, in which no interest was apparent, and glided quietly into the
little nook behind the counter, almost at his elbow. His heart enjoyed a
lively thump. Here was the first noticeably good-looking woman he
had seen in Edelweiss, and, by the powers, she was a sword-maker's
niece!
The old man looked sharply at him for an instant, and a quick little
smile writhed in and out among the mass of wrinkles. Instead of
passing directly out of the shop, Spantz stopped a moment to give the
girl some suddenly recalled instruction. Truxton King, you may be sure,
did not precede the old man into the street. He deliberately removed his
hat and waited most politely for age to go before youth, in the
meantime blandly gazing upon the face of this amazing niece.
Across the square, at one of the tables, he awaited his chance and a
plausible excuse for questioning the old man without giving offence.
Somewhere back in his impressionable brain there was growing a
distinct hope that this beautiful young creature with the dreamy eyes
was something more than a mere shopgirl. It had occurred to him in
that one brief moment of contact that she had the air, the poise of a true
aristocrat.
The old man, over his huge mug of beer, was properly grateful. He was
willing to repay King for his little attention by giving him a careful
history of Graustark, past, present and future, from the time of Tartar
rule to the time of the so-called "American invasion." ills glowing
description of the little Prince might have interested Truxton in his
Lord Fauntleroy days, but just at present he was more happily engaged
in speculating on the true identify of the girl in the gun-shop. He
recalled the fact that a former royal princess of Graustark had gone
sight-seeing over the world, incognita, as a Miss Guggenslocker, and

had been romantically snatched up by a lucky American named Lorry.
What if this girl in the gun-shop should turn out to be a--well, he could
hardly hope for a princess; but she might be a countess.
The old mart was rambling on. "The young Prince has lived most of his
life in Washington and London and Paris, sir. He's only seven, sir. Of
course, you remember the dreadful accident that made him an orphan
and put him on the throne with the three 'wise men of the East' as
regents or governors. The train wreck near Brussels, sir? His mother,
the glorious Princess Yetive, was killed and his father, Mr. Lorry, died
the next day from his injuries. That, sir, was a most appalling blow to
the people of Graustark. We loved the Princess and we admired her fine
American husband. There never will be another pair like them, sir. And
to think of them being destroyed as they were--in the most dreadful