The Lost Prince Read Free Page B

things, and they always made him feel that he wished he had something to do.
    Suddenly he turned away from the gate and went into the house to speak to Lazarus. He found him in his dingy closet of a room on the fourth floor at the back of the house.
    ‘I am going for a walk,’ he announced to him. ‘Please tell my father if he asks for me. He is busy, and I must not disturb him.’
    Lazarus was patching an old coat as he often patched things – even shoes sometimes. When Marco spoke, he stood up at once to answer him. He was very obstinate and particular about certain forms of manner. Nothing would have obliged him to remain seated when Loristan or Marco was near him. Marco thought it was because he had been so strictly trained as a soldier. He knew that his father had had great trouble to make him lay aside his habit of saluting when they spoke to him.
    ‘Perhaps,’ Marco had heard Loristan say to him almost severely, once when he had forgotten himself and had stood at salute while his master passed through a broken-down iron gate before an equally brokendown-looking lodging-house – ‘perhaps you can force yourself to remember when I tell you that it is not safe –
it is not safe
! You put us in danger!’
    It was evident that this helped the good fellow to control himself. Marco remembered that at the time he had actually turned pale, and had struck his forehead and poured forth a torrent of Samavian dialect in penitence and terror. But, though he no longer saluted them in public, he omitted no other form of reverence and ceremony, and the boy had become accustomed to being treated as if he were anything but the shabby lad whose very coat was patched by the old soldier who stood ‘at attention’ before him.
    ‘Yes, sir,’ Lazarus answered. ‘Where was it your wish to go?’
    Marco knitted his black brows a little in trying to recall distinct memories of the last time he had been in London.
    ‘I have been to so many places, and have seen so many things since I was here before, that I must begin to learn again about the streets and buildings I do not quite remember.’
    ‘Yes, sir,’ said Lazarus. ‘There
have
been so many. I also forget. You were but eight years old when you were last here.’
    ‘I think I will go and find the royal palace, and then I will walk about and learn the names of the streets,’ Marco said.
    ‘Yes, sir,’ answered Lazarus, and this time he made his military salute.
    Marco lifted his right hand in recognition, as if he had been a young officer. Most boys might have looked awkward or theatrical in making the gesture, but he made it with naturalness and ease, because he had been familiar with the form since his babyhood. He had seen officers returning the salutes of their men when they encountered each other by chance in the streets, he had seen princes passing sentries on their way to their carriages, more august personages raising the quiet, recognizing hand to their helmets as they rode through applauding crowds. He had seen many royal persons and many royal pageants, but always only as an ill-clad boy standing on the edge of the crowd of common people. An energetic lad, however poor, cannot spend his days in going from one country to another without, by mere everyday chance, becoming familiar with the outer life of royalties and courts. Marco had stood in continental thoroughfares when visiting emperors rode by with glittering soldiery before and behind them, and a populace shouting courteous welcomes. He knew where in various great capitals the sentries stood before kingly or princely palaces. He had seen certain royal faces often enough to know them well, and to be ready to make his salute when particular quiet and unattended carriages passed him by.
    ‘It is well to know them. It is well to observe everything and to train one’s self to remember faces and circumstances,’ his father had said. ‘If you were a young prince or a young man training for a diplomatic career,