"I am no courtier," answered Mr. Alworth, suppressing the lackey's outbreak by a look; "but I am acquainted with many that are," he went on with a flicker of a smile; "and I often hear them say that His Majesty is not difficult of access, provided you have, of course, some letter of commendation." "Not the ghost of one," said Lee with another blank stare. "Ha! ha!" grinned the lackey in vast enjoyment of Lawrence's discomfiture. "A pretty fellow! What do you say to that, Mr. Alworth?" "Silence, Mr. Flippet," said Alworth sternly. "You should have provided yourself, my friend," he went on, turning again to Lee. "You have doubtless influential neighbours--" "Oh, yes!" said Lawrence, scratching his curls. "Standing well at court?" continued Mr. Alworth. "Well, I don't know so much about that. H'm, h'm--the fact is," stammered on Lawrence, "I--you see, I came off in--in just a bit of a hurry." "And the more haste the less speed. You will know that, when those brown locks of yours have got a silver streak or two among them. Well, I don't know what's to be done," he added cogitatively. [Sidenote: How to see the King.] "Go back where he came from, like a bad penny," interjected the hugely delighted Flippet, but in a key too low to catch the ear of Alworth, of whom he stood in wholesome awe. That personage having, as he believed, and not without good cause, power to mar or to advance his fortunes by reason of his intimate acquaintance with many whose time was passed about the presence of the king. And Mr. Flippet was fond of his place, in spite of his complaints concerning its arduous and fatiguing duties. These consisted in the daily washing and combing of a couple of little dogs, respectively named Azor and Médor, two prime favourites among the posse of snubby-nosed, silky-coated, fringy-pawed, lilliputian spaniels which his majesty loved to have about him. As to the daily airing necessary for their health, the king himself was their nurse; and the toilets of the little creatures completed, Mr. Flippet was lord of his time, of which the portion not devoted to slumber, eating and drinking, and the basset-table, he spent in dawdling about. "I fear there is nothing for it," said Mr. Alworth after a brief speculative silence, "but for you to return home, and obtain such a letter of introduction. 'Tis a case, I doubt, where, as the old saying has it, 'the longest way round is the shortest way there.': "Go back!" cried Lee in dismay. "Thirty miles if 'tis a yard. Sir! sir! and 'tis a matter of life and death!" "That's what they all say when they want to be fleecing the king or you; an't it, Master Alworth?" sneered the lackey. [Sidenote: Flippet's duties.] The remark was, however, lost on Alworth, who was absorbed in the study of Lawrence's countenance; but turning his eyes on Flippet at last, he said: "Mr. Flippet, you are a person of considerable influence with the gentlemen of the bed-chamber--according to your own account."