The King stepped up on to the verandah, to her side. "I had to come," he confessed. "It is a long time, a week, ten days, since you were here." "I am not my own master. I have been--very busy. They have given me--promotion!" "The Service! Always the Service!" Judith cried. "It is the King's Service," the King replied. "I know! I would not have it otherwise, even if I could," Judith murmured. "I am glad, and proud, that you have been very busy; that they have given you--promotion; that you serve--the King! And, tonight, you are wearing his colours?" As she spoke, she put out her hand, and deftly rearranged the long ribbons of the red, white, and blue rosette, which the audacious Doris had pinned to his coat, earlier in the night. "And, tonight, I am wearing his colours," the King replied. "When the storm, that they say is coming, really breaks, the King will need all his friends." With a quick, abrupt movement, which seemed to indicate a sudden change of mood, Judith laid her hands on his shoulders, and turned him a little to the right, so that the moonlight fell full upon his face. "Yes. You have changed. Your--promotion--has made a difference," she murmured. "You speak gravely. You look older. You are more serious. And there are little lines, and wrinkles, and a frown there, that was never there before." The King drew in his breath sharply. The light pressure of Judith's hands on his shoulders, and the sudden acute sense of her nearness which it brought him, disturbed him strangely. This was a mistake. This was dangerous. And it was unlike Judith. It was not Judith's way. All at once Judith seemed to divine his distress. She turned from him quickly. "Come and see the Imps," she said, "I was just going in, to look at them, when you arrived." Light of foot, and slender, and tall, she moved off then, on tiptoe, without waiting for him, along the shadowy verandah, towards the open window-door of the night nursery near by. Conscious of a relief, of which he was somehow ashamed, the King followed her, obediently, on tiptoe in turn. In the night nursery, the nightlight, which protected Button and Bill from the evil machinations of ghosts and goblins, was burning dimly, in its saucer, on the mantelpiece, but a shaft of bright moonlight revealed the two cots, at the far end of the room, in which the children lay, fast asleep, side by side. Judith was already bending over the foot of the cots, when the King entered the room. She looked round at him, finger on lip, as he approached. Button, flushed and rosy, stirred in his sleep, and flung one small arm out of bed, across the snow-white counterpane. Bill, cherubic and chubby, heroically lying on, lest he should suck, his thumb, never moved.