Inquiries made of his attendant, when the cortege had swept by, had elicited the fact that the Royal Lady herself had children--little boys who were princes and little girls who were princesses.

What curious and persistent child cross-examination on his part had drawn forth the fact that almost all the people who drove about and looked so happy and brilliant, were the fathers or mothers of little boys like, yet--in some mysterious way--unlike himself?
And in what manner had he gathered that he was different from them?
His nurse, it is true, was not a pleasant person, and had an injured and resentful bearing.

In later years he realised that it had been the bearing of an irregularly paid menial, who rebelled against the fact that her place was not among people who were of distinction and high repute, and whose households bestowed a certain social status upon their servitors.

She was a tall woman with a sour face and a bearing which conveyed a glum endurance of a position beneath her.

Yes, it had been from her--Brough her name was--that he had mysteriously gathered that he was not a desirable charge, as regarded from the point of the servants' hall--or, in fact, from any other point.