He was, to be perfectly candid, very much interested in her and very much distressed by the fact that she was bound to a venerable reprobate who dared not put his foot on Graustark soil because once he had defiled it atrociously.
But of the Countess and her visits to Edelweiss, more anon--with the indulgence of the reader.
At present we are permitted to attend a meeting of the cabinet, which sits occasionally in solemn collectiveness just off the throne room within the tapestried walls of a dark little antechamber, known to the outside world as the "Room of Wrangles." It is ten o'clock of the morning on which the Prince is to review the troops from the fortress.
The question under discussion relates to the loan of 5,000,000 gavvos, before mentioned.

At the head of the long table, perched upon an augmentary pile of law books surmounted by a little red cushion, sits the Prince, almost lost in the hugh old walnut chair of his forefathers.
Down the table sit the ten ministers of the departments of state, all of them loving the handsome little fellow on the necessary pile of statutes, but all of them more or less indifferent to his significant yawns and perplexed frowns.
The Prince was a sturdy, curly-haired lad, with big brown eyes and a lamentably noticeable scratch on his nose--acquired in less stately but more profitable pursuits.

(It seems that he had peeled his nose while sliding to second base in a certain American game that he was teaching the juvenile aristocracy how to play.) His wavy hair was brown and rebellious.

No end of royal nursing could keep it looking sleek and proper.

He had the merit of being a very bad little boy at times; that is why he was loved by every one.