"Aye," said the ex-Regent--though possibly not in such good faith as the Baron. "We shall indeed have reason to congratulate ourselves if his Royal Highness will graciously teach us how to construct one of these fire-and-smoke-breathing engines that draw a line of waggons along roads of iron, or even a mast that will send messages through a thousand leagues of air." "You don't want _much_, do you, dear old boy?" said Clarence. "You don't suppose I can show you how to build a railway train when you haven't got any of the bally materials or appliances, do you?" "Your Royal Highness has but to name them, and they shall be procured." "They're not to be got here," replied Clarence. "If I tried to tell you what they were, you wouldn't be any the wiser!" He spoke nothing but the truth, for he had but the sketchiest acquaintance with the composition of any kind of machinery. "Perhaps His Majesty," suggested the Marshal, who had long ago taken King Sidney's measure, "is better able to instruct us in these mighty secrets?" "H'm, well, to tell you the truth," confessed the King, "although I've been in the habit of using railways, motors, electric light, telephones, and so forth constantly, I can't pretend to more than a general notion of how they work. Couldn't _make_ any of 'em, you know. Not _my_ line of business!" "If that is indeed the case," said the President, "we find it the more difficult to understand why his Royal Highness should have reproached us for an ignorance which is no greater than either his own or your Majesty's." "I wasn't reproaching you," said the Crown Prince, a little awkwardly, "I was only telling you how differently things are managed where _we_ come from. But after all, that isn't the point, so we'll say no more about it. Let's get back to the Gnomes. One of you--I think it was the gentleman with the grey topknot--objected that there was no other useful way of employing them, except in the mine. Well, of course, we've thought all that out," he declared, though, as a matter of fact, the idea had only just struck him. "We intend to set 'em to work at laying out a golf links, and when they've done that, we shall keep 'em on as caddies. They're such nippy little devils that they ought to be jolly useful.... Ah, naturally, you _wouldn't_ know what Golf is. Well, Golf happens to be a thing I _do_ know something about. I can teach you _that_ right enough. It's simply the greatest game going, and you'll be grateful to me for introducing it. Don't worry," he added, as some of the Council expressed dissent, "nobody's asking you to learn unless you like. I shouldn't say myself that any of you--except perhaps the Marshal--was very likely to shape into a 'plus' man. I fancy _he's_ got the makings of a golfer in him, though, and, once I've got the course laid out and given him a lesson or two, I bet you'll see he'll be as keen as mustard."