badges and buttons and things, and he said at once, “Ha!  Orders of Distinction!  An excellent idea.”  He picked up a silly little white button with the motto “Welcome to New York,” and he said “Admirable!  That shall be the first class.”  And there was a little lead spoon with “Souvenir of the Bowery” that he made the second class.  He started arranging and rearranging all the things in the box, just as he used to arrange the orders and decorations at the Palace.  Only those were real things such as the Order of the Red Feather, and The Insignia of the Black Duck, and these were only poor tin baubles.  But I could see that Uncle no longer knows the difference, and as his fingers fumbled among these silly things he was quite trembling and eager to begin, like a child waiting for to-morrow.

CHAPTER VI

It is a year or nearly a year since I wrote in my memoirs, and I only add to them now because things have happened which mean that I shall never write any more.

Mr. Peters and I were married last autumn.  He asked me if I would marry him the day that he held the arm of my chair in the boarding house where we used to live.  At first I never thought that Uncle William would permit it, because of the hopeless difference of birth.  But it turned out that there was no difficulty at all.  Uncle’s mind was always so wonderful that he could find a way out of anything provided that he wanted to.  So he conferred on Mr. Peters an Order that raised him right up in birth so that he came level with me.  Uncle said that he could have lifted him higher still if need be but that as I was only, in our old life, of a younger branch of the family, it was not necessary to lift Mr. Peters to the very top.  He takes precedence, Uncle said, just below Uncle Henry of Prussia and just above an Archbishop.

It is so pleasant to think—­now that poor Uncle William is gone—­that my marriage was with his full consent.

But even after Uncle William had given his formal consent, I didn’t want to get married till I could leave him safely.  Only he got along so well in his “territory” of the Bowery from the very start that he was soon quite all right.  He used to go out every morning with his trayful of badges and pencils and shoe-strings and he was a success at once.  All the people got to know him by sight and they would say when they saw him, “Here comes the Emperor,” or “Here comes Old Dutch,” and very often there would be quite a little crowd round him buying his things.  Uncle regarded himself always as conferring a great dignity on any one that he sold a badge to, but he was very capricious and he had certain buttons and badges that he would only part with as a very special favour and honour.  Uncle got on so fast that presently Cousin Ferdinand decided that it would be all right to know him again and so he came over and made a reconciliation and took away Uncle’s money,—­it was all in small coins,—­in a bag to invest for him.