But Jimmie could not get up the nerve to ask. When the young lady came back, carrying his chamber washed clean, her pet patient was lying still, but so red in the face that she suspected that he had been trying to get out of bed without permission. III Nor was that the end of wonders. Next day there ran a murmur of excitement through the ward, and everything was cleaned up fresh, though there was really nothing that needed cleaning. Flowers were brought in, and each nurse had a flower pinned on her waist. When Jimmie asked what was “up”, the Honourable Beatrice looked at him with a quizzical smile. “We're going to have some distinguished visitors,” she said. “But you won't be interested--a class-conscious proletarian like you.” And she would not tell him; but when she went out, the fellow in the next bed told. “It's the king and queen that's comin',” said the gun-pointer. “Aw, ferget it!” said Jimmie--quite sure he was being “kidded” this time. “Comin' to see the submarine victims,” said the gun-pointer. “You cut out your Socialist rough stuff for to-day.” Jimmie asked the nurse when she came back; and sure enough it was true--the king and queen were to visit the hospital, and pay their respects to the victims of the U-boat. But that wouldn't interest Jimmie Higgins. Would he not rather be carried away and put in a private room somewhere, so that his revolutionary eyes would not be offended? Or would he stay, and make a soap-boxer of His Majesty? “Sure, he won't have no time to talk to a feller like me!” said Jimmie. “Don't you be too sure,” replied the other. “He's got nothing to do but talk, you know!” Jimmie didn't venture any farther, because he knew that the Honourable Beatrice was laughing at him, and he had never been laughed at by a woman before, and didn't know quite how to take it. He could not have been expected to understand that the Honourable Beatrice was a suffragette, and laughed at all men on general principles. Jimmie lay quietly in his bed and concealed the unworthy excitement in his soul. Wasn't that the devil now? Him, a little runt of a working man from nowhere in particular, that had been brought up on a charity-farm, and spent a good part of his life as a tramp--him to be meeting the king of England! Jimmie had a way of disposing of kings that was complete and final; he called them “kinks” and when he had called them that he had settled them, wiped them clean out. “None o' them kinks for me!” he had said to the Honourable Beatrice.