He had a much shrewder notion than his father of what would happen if the London newspapers were to be informed that an American banking gentleman had decided to be their king. Yet if there were that one-millionth chance, if it could be true–-

Why not look into the history books and find out whether his father’s Secret was completely absurd, or only ninety-nine per cent. so? It would be exciting for Biddy to be able to say that she was the king’s daughter. From what he knew of that dictatorial young lady, he would not think it beyond her to round up all the neighborhood children and yelp, “Oyez, oyez, you canst now approach my royal person.” He remembered the Christmas crown of gilt paper, which she had worn proudly though sidewise.

At the kitchen table, over gin-and-ginger-ale, he explained it all to Vestal. It was on a winter Sunday afternoon. They had gorged on turkey, napped, listened to the broadcast of the Philharmonic Orchestra, studied the sports and fashions in the Sunday Frontier-Banner. On the sun-porch, Biddy, with her cousin Ruby and Peggy Havock, was playing with the debris of her Christmas presents. As children of the final Anglo-Saxon civilization, they were machine-gunning a sad-eyed brown woolen pup and a doll with a glass necklace and a broken nose.

“So look who’s a king!” Vestal jeered. “Your dad certainly is an old darling, and the craziest dreamer in town. Isn’t that nice! If we ever save up enough money, which with the present price of meat is highly unlikely, we might go over to the Old Country and look at Our palace, and then get the hell back here, where we understand the dialect. But may I say, Captain, that I couldn’t love you better if you were not only King of Britain but Exalted Ruler of the Elks. Anyway, I bet I play a sharper game of gin-rummy than any other queen living. Come here.”

In the sun-room she dug Biddy’s crown out from the Christmas ruins and gravely placed it on Neil’s brow, adjusting it as she would a new hat, and she demanded of the three delighted babies, “Now tell me, chicks, what is he?”

“He’s a king!” they all shrieked.

Vestal curtsied to him.

“You are both very silly,” said Biddy.

In that world of war-widowed wives and of babies who had never seen their fathers, Biddy was proud of having a visible and proven father.

“How would you like it if I were a sure-enough king?” asked Neil.

His daughter admired, “I think you’d be a dandy king, and then maybe you could be an actor in the movies!”

It was Shirley’s Sunday night off. As Neil and Vestal got the supper, she meditated, “I love trying to think of you as a king, but I can’t do it. You’re so obviously just what you are: a one-hundred per cent. normal, white, Protestant, male, middle-class, efficient, golf-loving, bound-to-succeed, wife-pampering, Scotch-English Middlewestern American. I wouldn’t believe that you were anything else, not if you brought me papers signed by General Eisenhower to prove it. Oh, didums want to be a king, in a castle? Well, you shall be king in my heart.”