"Your royaliness, and my lords and ladies, it was like this. His royaliness comed in with a rug over his arm, and summat under it. And he lays it down on that there seat, and Thomas shows him into the droring- room. Then Benson says: 'Dinner'll be ready in five minutes; how tired I do feel!' Then he takes the libbuty of sitting hisself down on his royaliness's rug, and he says, asking your pardon, 'I've had about enough of service here. I'm about tired, and I thinks of bettering myself. I wish I was at the king's court, and butler.' But before the words was out of his mouth, off he flies like a shot through the open door, and his royaliness's parcel with him. I run to the door, and there he was, flying right hover the town, in a northerly direction. And that's all I know; for I would not tell a lie, not if it was never so. And me, and Thomas--as didn't see it,--and cook, we thinks as how Benson was come for. And cook says as she don't wonder at it, neither; for a grumblinger, more ill-conditioneder--" {The Butler on the carpet: p89.jpg} "Thank you, William," said Lord Kelso; "that will do; you can go, for the present." CHAPTER XIII. _Surprises_. The prince said nothing, the ambassador said nothing, Lady Rosalind said never a word till they were in the drawing-room. It was a lovely warm evening, and the French windows were wide open on the balcony, which looked over the town and away north to the hills. Below them flowed the clear, green water of the Gluckthal. And still nobody said a word. At last the prince spoke: "This is a very strange story, Lord Kelso!" "Very, sir!" said the ambassador. "But true," added the prince; "at least, there is no reason in the nature of things why it shouldn't be true." "I can hardly believe, sir, that the conduct of Benson, whom I always found a most respectable man, deserved--" "That he should be 'come for,'" said the prince. "Oh, no; it was a mere accident, and might have happened to any of us who chanced to sit down on my carpet." And then the prince told them, shortly, all about it: how the carpet was one of a number of fairy properties, which had been given him at his christening; and how so long a time had gone by before he discovered them; and how, probably, the carpet had carried the butler where he had said he wanted to go, namely--to the king's Court at Falkenstein. "It would not matter so much," added the prince, "only I had relied on making my peace with his majesty, my father, by aid of those horns and that tail. He was set on getting them; and if the Lady Rosalind had not expressed a wish for them, they would to-day have been in his possession." "Oh, sir, you honour us too highly," murmured Lady Rosalind; and the prince blushed and said: "Not at all! Impossible!"