"Oh, dear!" she thought, "it would be the easiest thing in the world for me to be killed (even if I _am_ pretty), and no one would know it at all. I wonder what is going to happen? I wish I had n't come." "Don't be afraid!" said the familiar voice, suddenly. "We promised to take care of you. We are truth itself. Don't be afraid!" "But I _am_ afraid," insisted Marjorie, in a petulant way, "and I 'm getting afraider every minute. I don't know where I 'm going, nor how I 'm being taken there, and I don't like it one bit. Who are you, anyway?" For a moment she received no reply; but then the voice said: "Hush! don't speak so irreverently. You are talking to the emissaries of a great sovereign,--his Majesty the Sun." "Is _he_ carrying me along?" inquired Marjorie presently, with deep respect. "Oh, dear, no," responded the voice; "we are doing that. We are his vassals,--you call us beams. He never condescends to leave his place,--he could not; if he were to desert his throne for the smallest fraction of a second, one could not imagine the amount of disaster that would ensue. But we do his bidding, and hasten north and south and east and west, just as he commands. It is a very magnificent thing to be a king--" "Of course," interrupted Marjorie; "one can wear such elegant clothes, that shine and sparkle like everything with gold and jewels, and have lots of servants and--" "No, no," corrected the beam, warmly. "Where did you get such a wrong idea of things? That is not at all where the splendor of being a king exists. It does not lie in the mere fact of one 's being born to a title and able to command. That would be very little if that were all. It is not in the gold and jewels and precious stuffs that go to adorn a king that his grandeur lies, but in the things which these things represent. We give a king the rarest and the most costly, because it is fitting that the king should have the best,--that he is worthy of the best; that only the best will serve one who is so great and glorious. They mean nothing in themselves; they only describe his greatness. The things that one sees are not of importance; it is the things that they are put there to represent. Do you understand? I don't believe you do. I 'll try to make it more clear to you, like a true sunbeam. Look at one of your earth-kings, for instance. He is nothing but a man just like the rest of you; but what makes him great is that he is supposed to have more truth, more wisdom, more justice and power. If he has not these things, then he would better never have been a king; for that only places him where every one can see how unworthy he is,--makes his lacks only more conspicuous. Your word _king_ comes from another word, _koenning_; which comes from still another word, _canning_, that means _ableman_. If he is not really an ableman, it were better he had never worn ermine. And there, too; ermine is only a fur, you know. It is nothing in itself but fur; but