“This Henry Aragon Kingsblood claimed he was descended from a son of Henry the Eighth and Catherine of Aragon, who would be the real heir. But when Henry got sore at Catherine and kicked her out, he concealed the existence of this son, who’s supposed to have been named Julian, Prince Julian, and who was brought up by faithful cottagers who called him ‘Julian of the King’s Blood’—hence our name.

“Now of course, him being the son of Catherine, that makes us part Spanish, and I don’t know as I like that so much—I’ve always been proud of our English and Scotch blood; you know my mother was very distantly related to Bruce and Wallace and all those famous kilties, and that’s a real fact! But still, when you think that Catherine’s folks were Ferdinand and Isabella, that told Columbus to go and discover America, that makes her just about as high-born as the English, and you can see from our red hair, yours and mine, that the Spanish blood hasn’t done us any harm.

“Well, there’s the story. Maybe there isn’t a word of truth in it, but do you suppose you could make a little effort to find out, boy?”

He looked so wistful. Neil was fond of his gentle father, and he vowed, “You bet I will, Dad.”

“I’d appreciate it. Just remember that it’s not plumb impossible. There was this fellow out West, in Alberta, I think it was, or it might have been Wyoming—I don’t believe he was a Mormon, but very likely he was—and he found out he was the rightful earl of something or other—just a plain ranchman! So you see.”

“Anyway, be kind of nice to know,” Neil agreed. “And you may think it’s a joke, but when Biddy put on that gilt crown in front of the tree, she sure looked like a real queen. Yes, I’ll take a shot at it.”

And in January of the new year, he did.

Chapter 9

He had read enough of pretenders to titles and lands to be certain that his father’s claim was fool’s gold. But the arrogant nonsense of it amused him, and he wanted a new hobby.

Since his leg would not let him ski, or go wallowing through the snowdrifts after rabbits, swimming at the Federal Club was his only sport. He had bored himself with bridge, with crossword puzzles, with an aimless reading of travel and biographies and the novels, the spiritual flowering of the war, in which Elizabethan tarts delighted several million respectable readers by doing things which would be considered undesirable in a young lady of Elizabeth, New Jersey.

He was glad that it was England of which he was to be king. He had seen little of it beyond docks, trains and a Tudor manor house which had been turned into a hospital, but he had felt that the kind and weary Englishwomen who had nursed him had been veritably his own people. From his room of convalescence he had looked out all day at a flint church with a battlemented tower and long harp-strings of winter-bleached ivy, and coming and going through its pointed door he had seen Tess and Jude and Little Neil and Lorna Doone—and J. G. Reeder and Henry Baskerville. There was no building in Grand Republic, not even the bit of log stockade from 1862 which was built into the Fashion Livery Stable Garage, which was to him so admirable a proof of the enduring courage of mankind.