"Oh, was it?" exclaimed his companion, choking down his risibles. "Well--ah--I don't exactly feel it that way. A mere trifle." "Not to me," declared Rube. "Perhaps not to me, either," conceded Jerome, looking on the subject more seriously. "For Clara--" "You can patch up Clara," Rube suggested, soothingly. "Do you think so? It's a rankling _casus belli_ at present, I can tell you! But how about your rustic beauty, eh, Rube? Is she pleased? Does she like it?" "Pleased? Like it? You bet she does! She's delighted!" "No one has introduced me yet," Jerome next remarked, quite incidentally. "And I am sure if her Gracious Majesty smiles upon any of her loyal subjects it ought to be me." "That's so! So come right along now." They reached her side. "Mell, here's the very best fellow in the world," said Rube, out of the fullness of his heart, forgetting the prescribed forms of etiquette in the absorption of warm feeling. Mell had noted their approach. She was not taken unawares. She bent her head slightly to the newcomer, she looked him over for a whole minute, it seemed, before she opened her lips and said: "How do you do, Mr. Very-Best-Fellow-in-the-World?" Those near enough to hear roared with laughter, for the young queen's manner made the whole thing so absurdly funny; and perhaps there is nothing a crowd so much enjoys as the taking down of a person whom they regard in the light of one much needing to be taken down. "His name is Devonhough," Rube hastened to explain, not relishing the laugh against his friend at this particular time by his particular fault. "Mr. Devonhough, Miss Creecy. He is my very best friend, Mell. Shake hands with him." Mell did so; but without the faintest glimmering of a smile, and with such glacial dignity as fairly charged the atmosphere with iciness. Not content with this, she met all his subsequent efforts to cultivate her acquaintance with the briefest and chilliest repulses. Rube was much concerned. He saw dimly that his best friend had not, somehow, made a favorable impression upon his future wife; but he could not tell the why or wherefore. While he wondered within him what he could do to put things on a pleasanter footing between them, someone else demanded his attention. "See here," said Jerome, as soon as Rube's back was turned. "I hope you now consider me sufficiently punished. I hope you feel even. I hope you won't treat me to any more state airs. I am tired of them. Your Majesty, let me tell you something. Mark well my words. It is to me, not Rube, you owe your present exaltation." "_To you!_" The unsmiling countenance now broke into a ripple of scorn. "What a ridiculous thing for you to say!"