Chapter Eleven
Bewildered, Titus made his own way back to the great drawing room. Humans, he thought as he went, I don’t understand them. I mean, look at our servant just now – one minute she was angry, the next she was laughing her head off. Perhaps it’s because they’re Royals, maybe they’re different from other people. They must be if you think about it because everybody else treats them quite differently. I mean, look at the footmen, they go out of the room backwards, and the maids, they curtsy, and Sir Gregory, he bows. Royal people must be very special.
I wonder if Royal dogs are too? After all, we corgis are the Queen’s dogs, so maybe we’re all princes and princesses. Prince Titus, how does that sound? Actually, I think I’d rather be a king among dogs. King Titus the First. Yes, that’s more like it.
‘Wherever have you been?’ Prissy asked her son when he came into the room. ‘You’re all wet – your paws are soaking.’
All the other corgis gathered around Titus while he explained what had been going on.
‘The bathwater came right through the ceiling, you say?’ Prissy asked.
‘Yes, right down into the Queen’s sitting room.’
‘But why,’ asked one of the other dogs, ‘hadn’t Prince Philip turned the taps off?’
‘He went to sleep in the bath,’ Titus replied.
‘And she was angry with him?’ asked someone else.
‘Yes, very.’
‘But then she started laughing, you say?’ said another.
‘Yes,’ said Titus. ‘I don’t understand people. They don’t seem to act normally, like dogs do.’
‘Well, dogs get angry sometimes, don’t they?’ said Prissy. ‘You did, with Chum.’
‘That wasn’t anything to laugh at,’ growled Chum, and he continued, unsuccessfully, to try to lick his injured ear.
‘Anyway,’ said Prissy, ‘if I’ve got the story right, it was your barking that woke both of them up.’
‘You seem to be making quite a name for yourself, my son,’ Prissy said. ‘First catching a burglar, and now giving the alarm and saving the situation. What next? I wonder. If you keep on like this, you won’t only be sleeping on the Queen’s bed, you’ll be eating off her plate, I shouldn’t be surprised.’
At that moment the Queen came into the room. All the dogs crowded around her, and she gave each a pat and a special stroking to Chum (‘How’s your poor ear feeling, old boy?’) and to Prissy (‘How does it feel to be the mother of a hero, eh?’).
Then she rang the bell, and when the black-moustached footman came in, she said, ‘Take all the dogs out on to the lawn, please, John.’ When that had been done, the Queen ordered custard creams all round (with an extra chocolate digestive for the hero) and when those had been eaten, she said, ‘Right, everybody, bedtime!’ and nine corgis settled themselves comfortably in armchairs and on sofas, while the tenth and youngest followed Her Majesty as she made her way to the State Bedroom.
Once she herself was comfortably settled, the Queen turned out her bedside light. She yawned. Then she wiggled her toes against the warm shape that lay on the end of her bed. ‘G’night, Titus,’ she said sleepily. ‘I may be a queen among my people but you’re a king among my dogs.’