The Baron von Habelschwert, standing over the group and nervously twirling his fierce moustache, shuddered and groaned. It was bad enough that his young, but pig-headed Hohenzollern should play at all with children who were neither high, nor well-born; but that he should only be admitted to play with them on terms passed the limit of human decency. He had read often in the sterner, but agrarian, papers of his Fatherland, that, owing to the increase of the Socialist vote, the world was coming to an end. He felt its once so solid mass trembling beneath his feet. But the hope of the house of Lippe-Schweidnitz, insensible to the tremor, said eagerly: "Yes." "All right: then we'll try letting you play with us and see," said Pollyooly. There came a faint murmur of protest from her friends, or rather from her followers; and she added with comforting assurance: "Oh, it's all right; you needn't worry about him; I'll see that he behaves, myself." With that assurance they were content--they had to be; the prince was admitted to the circle; and Pollyooly picked him on her side. It had the first innings; and the baron expected the prince to be put in first. He was annoyed to observe that, as a mere matter of tactics, since she was by far the fastest of her side, that Pollyooly took that position herself. He was further annoyed when she put in her friend Kathleen next, an act of sheer favouritism unjustified by Kathleen's capacity; and after Kathleen she put in a little boy, and then another little girl. As they played their innings, she stood beside the prince and instructed him in the game. Once, since he appeared slow to grasp her meaning, she caught him by the shoulder and shook him to make it clearer. The Baron von Habelschwert ground his teeth. When at last the prince did go in, the baron's heart swelled with proud expectation: his gallant little charge would display to those English children (they were neither high, nor well-born) the natural superiority of his royal blood and race. The prince, however, did not fulfil this loyal expectation. He hit the ball, indeed, and in obedience to Pollyooly's shriek of instruction, started to run. But he started to run the wrong way round. His side shrieked as one child, as Pollyooly sprang upon him, swung him round, and shoved him along in the right direction. She succeeded in arresting his mad course at the first base by one of the shrillest shrieks of "Stop!" that ever burst from human lung. The next time the ball was hit she set him going again by a companion shriek; and with others of a like piercing quality (they seemed to flow from her lungs in an inexhaustible abundance) she guided him safely round the bases and home. From the blundering, stumbling way he ran, her shrieks seemed to be the only things in the world of which he was really conscious.