I went to my room and spent about half an hour on that make-up. I think the result was pretty good, seeing that I had not got all the materials that I wanted to work with. I called Mrs Crewe up and she was astounded. She said now that it was perfectly safe, that nobody on earth could have recognised me. "Very well," I said. "You must wait until ten minutes after the down-train is in. Elsie knows the trains and can hear them from where she is lying. You must tell her that the King does not wear his crown and his gorgeous robes when he is travelling, but only a black coat, just like the doctor." When I was an actor I was never afflicted with nervousness; but as I heard Mrs Crewe in the next room tell Elsie exactly what I had told her to say, I shivered with fear. Suppose, after all, the child should find me out! Elsie slept in a small bed in her mother's room. As I entered she tried to raise herself a little, and said in her best voice--the one that she used in church on Sunday--"I am so sorry that I cannot get up to make a curtsy to you. And ought I to call you 'Your Majesty' or just 'King'?" "The correct etiquette," I said, "is for children to call me 'King'. I am very glad to have been able to come down to see you, Elsie. It was only by the merest chance that I could get away." I gave her my whitened hand with the flash rings on it. She put her lips to it. "That will be something to tell the other girls," she said. His Majesty inquired who the other girls were. He was told that Elsie had not been seeing much of them lately, because she had been ill; but she would be well and strong again very soon now--her mother had told her so. The other girls were very nice girls. Sarah Miggs had made a daisy-chain and sent it to her, and it was twice as long as the bed. All this time Mrs Crewe had, by my direction, remained standing. She adopted a most respectful attitude, and curtsied whenever I looked at her. I now heard from her an ominous sniffling. If the silly woman began to blubber, there was a chance that the thing would be given away. "Mrs Crewe," I said, with dignity, "you have our permission to retire." She backed out of the room, and presently we heard her very busy in the kitchen, making an almost unnecessary noise with pots and pans. But perhaps that was intended to cover other sounds. Elsie now demanded information about the interior of Buckingham Palace. I invented splendours, and she listened with rapture; she said it sounded more like Heaven than anything else. She put a plain question to me as to the value of the enormous diamond on my finger. She found that it had cost even more than she supposed, and she was interested in hearing the history of it. The diamond had once been the eye of an idol in India. Presently she said, with distress: "Oh dear me, King, I do wish you could stop. There is such a lot more I want to ask you. But you will only just have time to catch the nine-thirteen, and that's the last up-train to-night."