As we stood at the entrance, staring about us, Nathaniel plucked at my sleeve and pointed to an arcade-box done out in red brocade.

“The royal box!” he exclaimed.

He dragged me across the circular floor, walked boldly to the box beside the royal enclosure and made as though to enter. A lackey jumped up in it, his nose in the air, and said, “Resarved for Lard Jarge Germain.”

Nathaniel swung me into the adjoining box, and almost before I knew what had happened he had pushed me into a chair at its table and dropped into a seat across from me.

A waiter came in and stared at us angrily. But Nathaniel, who was skilled at aping the English, turned to him and said haughtily, “What is it, my man?”

On this the waiter became ill at ease, and mumbled that the box was reserved.

Nathaniel seemed pained. “I won’t be spoken to in such a way!” He appealed to me. “Do you suppose the clown doesn’t know who I am? Throw five shillings on the floor for him, Sir Peter! Not another farthing, mind! And have him bring us a bit of ham, eh, Sir Peter? And a quart of rack punch, by Ged!”

The waiter, at once obsequious, took the five shillings I tossed him and darted from the box with such alacrity that he tripped over the curtains.

“Look here!” I told Nathaniel. “You’ll get us into trouble if you call me Sir Peter; and we can’t be spending like a couple of dukes.”

Nathaniel smiled at me affectionately. “The ham’s a shilling a plate, and the punch seven shillings a quart. Only two dollars, Peter, for sitting in a box beside the box that’s next to the box where sat the King of England, and having an experience your grandchildren will be bragging about a hundred years from now!”

What he said was probably true; for a king is a king, even though weak in the head. Therefore I made no further protest and we listened to the orchestra and watched the throngs parading slowly around and around, like a school of pollock following one another’s tails in and out of a cove in the Arundel River, each one goggle-eyed with brainlessness.

How the paraders could imagine they were taking pleasure was beyond me; for the entire gathering had the air of despising everything and everyone. Yet for Nathaniel and myself it was as exciting as a play at Drury Lane; and as the evening went on it became more so.

Our platter of ham arrived, and the bowl of rack punch; and the thinness of the slices of ham was something remarkable—something that proved the carver a master craftsman, both with knife and niggardliness. As soon as Nathaniel saw the ham before him, he examined it with an air of incredulity; then said, “Peter, where’s Father’s letter?”