The prince had come back from a walk through the marsh with her, tired; and she had thought it better that he should have tea before walking the length of the village to his own lodging. The Honourable John Ruffin did not let his surprise be seen; he greeted his royal guest civilly and sat down. Pollyooly questioned him closely and with genuine interest about his successes and reverses on the links. Then the Honourable John Ruffin observed that his royal guest was flushed; then he discovered that Pollyooly was entertaining him in a fashion at once negligent and drastic: she made no effort to include him in their talk, but she was watching him with the eye of a lynx and giving him a lesson in table manners with the coldest serenity. "What is the matter with our royal guest exactly?" said the Honourable John Ruffin presently. "He is so hard to teach," said Pollyooly plaintively. "You'd be surprised. I keep telling him not to eat like a pig; and for about four mouthfuls he doesn't. Then he forgets all about it; and I have to begin all over again." The guilty flush deepened in the cheeks of the prince. "You must give it time to sink in. He's not used to learning things; he has been so neglected," said the Honourable John Ruffin with a hospitable desire to make things easier for her royal guest. Pollyooly shook her head doubtfully, and frowned sadly upon the prince. "It would take weeks and weeks; and I don't really ever see him at meals," she said. "Never mind: do what you can when you get the chance," said the Honourable John Ruffin in a heartening tone. "That's what I must do," said Pollyooly; but there was no great hopefulness in her voice. Sadly she handed a plate of cake to Prince Adalbert. There was a sudden gleam in his small, but Hohenzollern, eye, and in one swift gesture he took, or rather, to be exact, grabbed a slice, and thrust a corner of it into his mouth. As Pollyooly had said, for the first four bites all was well; but the next three were accompanied by a slushy noise such as arises in a pigstye at mealtime. "There! There it is again!" she cried in tones of the bitterest protest. "Isn't it dreadful?" The prince flushed a darker red and hushed the slushy accompaniment. The Honourable John Ruffin looked sympathetically sad. "I couldn't have believed that anybody could be so hard to teach a little thing like that to," said Pollyooly mournfully. The prince grunted. "Yes. I know you try to do your best--you needn't tell me that," said Pollyooly, who appeared to understand his syncopated Prussian. "But what is the good of a best like that?" The prince finished the slice of cake with only two more slushy sounds. Pollyooly sighed once or twice; and tea came to an end. They rose; and Pollyooly said with resolution: "I see what I shall have to do. I shall have to look after his outdoor manners only." CHAPTER XVII THE DUKE HAS AN IDEA