I.  
When Jimmie took an interest in life again he was lying in a bed: a bed that actually was still, that did not rise with a leaping motion to the ceiling, and then sink like a swift elevator into the basement. Better yet was the fact that this bed had clean sheets, and a lovely angel in spotless white hovering about it. You who read of Jimmie Higgins's adventures have perhaps been blessed with some of the good things of life, and may need to have it explained to you that never before had Jimmie known what it was to sleep between sheets—to say nothing of clean sheets; never had he known what it was to sleep in a night-gown; never had he had hot broth fetched to him by a snow-white angel with a bright smile and an aureole of golden-brown hair. This marvellous creature waited on his slightest nod, and when she was not busy running errands for him, she sat by his bedside and chatted, asking him all sorts of questions about himself and his life. She thought he was a soldier, and he, shameless wretch, discovered what she thought, and delayed to tell her that he was a common repairer of motor-cycles!
This was a war-hospital, and there were terrible sights to be seen here, terrible sounds to be heard; but Jimmie for a long time missed them almost entirely—he was so comfortable! He lay like a nice dozy cat; he ate good things and drank good things, and then he fell asleep, and then he opened his eyes in the sunshine of a golden brown aureole. It was only gradually that he realized that somewhere in the ward a man was choking and gasping all night, because the inside of his lungs had been partly eaten out with poisonous acids.
Jimmie inquired and was told that more than a hundred people on the transport had lost their lives, including several women; the nurse brought a paper with a list of the casualties, among which he read the name of Mike Angoni—his friend the “wobbly” from the far West! Also the name of Peter Toms—the seaman from Cornwall, caught at the eighth attempt! Jimmie read that the submarine which had sunk the transport had been shattered by a depth-charge, and the sea all strewn with the wreckage of it; and strange and terrible as it might seem, Jimmie, the pacifist, the Socialist, experienced a thrill of satisfaction! Not once did he stop to reflect that on board this under-water craft might have been some German comrade, some poor, enslaved, unhappy internationalist like himself! Jimmie wanted the sneaking, treacherous terrors of the sea exterminated, regardless of everything!
The nurse with the halo of golden-brown hair got interested in her American patient, and would sit and talk with him every chance she got. She learned about Eleeza Betooser and the babies who had been blown to pieces in the explosion. Also she learned about Jimmie's being a Socialist, and asked him questions about it. Wasn't he just a little hard on the leisure classes? Might it not be that some of the capitalists would be as glad as he to know about a better social system? The young lady pronounced the word “capitalists” with the accent on the “it”, which puzzled Jimmie for a time; also she assured him that “wage schedules” would never go back to what they were before the war, and Jimmie had to ask what a “schedule” might be. He did not have to ask what she meant by a “tart”, because there it was on his tray—a delicious little strawberry pie.
II.
 
This meant that the destroyer had come to an English port; the nurse was a Britisher. If Jimmie had had tact, he would have remembered that Britishers have an outfit of earls and dukes and lords and things, to which they are sentimentally attached. But tact is not the leading virtue of Socialists; in fact, Jimmie made a boast of scorning it—if people asked his opinion, he “gave it to 'em straight”. So now he caused this white angel to understand that he regarded the effete aristocracies of the old world with abysmal contempt; he meant to put them out of business right off the bat. In vain the white angel pleaded that some of them might be useful people, or at any rate well-meaning: Jimmie pronounced them a bunch of parasites and grafters; the thing to do was to make a clean sweep of them.
“You won't cut off their heads?” pleaded the nurse. “Surely they ought to have a chance to reform!”
“Oh, sure!” answered Jimmie. “All I mean is, everybody's got to go to work—the dooks an' aristercrats like the rest.”
The nurse went off, carrying Jimmie's chamber to be emptied; and while she was gone, the man in the next bed, a gun-pointer from an American destroyer with his head bandaged up so that he looked like a Hindu swami, turned his tired eyes upon Jimmie and drawled: “Say, you guy, you better can that line o' talk!”
“Whaddyer mean?” demanded Jimmie, scenting controversy with some militarist.
“I mean that there young lady belongs to the nobility herself.”
“Go on!” said Jimmie.
“Straight!” said the other. “Her father's the earl of Skye-terrier, or some such damn place.”
“Aw, cut it out!” growled the little machinist—for you never knew in dealing with these soldier-boys whether you were being “kidded” or not.
“Did you ask her name?”
“She told me it was Miss Clendenning.”
“Well, you ask her if she ain't the Honourable Beatrice Clendenning, and see what she says.”
But Jimmie could not get up the nerve to ask. When the young lady came back, carrying his chamber washed clean, her pet patient was lying still, but so red in the face that she suspected that he had been trying to get out of bed without permission.
III.
 
Nor was that the end of wonders. Next day there ran a murmur of excitement through the ward, and everything was cleaned up fresh, though there was really nothing that needed cleaning. Flowers were brought in, and each nurse had a flower pinned on her waist. When Jimmie asked what was “up”, the Honourable Beatrice looked at him with a quizzical smile. “We're going to have some distinguished visitors,” she said. “But you won't be interested—a class-conscious proletarian like you.”
And she would not tell him; but when she went out, the fellow in the next bed told. “It's the king and queen that's comin',” said the gun-pointer.
“Aw, ferget it!” said Jimmie—quite sure he was being “kidded” this time.
“Comin' to see the submarine victims,” said the gun-pointer. “You cut out your Socialist rough stuff for to-day.”
Jimmie asked the nurse when she came back; and sure enough it was true—the king and queen were to visit the hospital, and pay their respects to the victims of the U-boat. But that wouldn't interest Jimmie Higgins. Would he not rather be carried away and put in a private room somewhere, so that his revolutionary eyes would not be offended? Or would he stay, and make a soap-boxer of His Majesty?
“Sure, he won't have no time to talk to a feller like me!” said Jimmie.
“Don't you be too sure,” replied the other. “He's got nothing to do but talk, you know!”
Jimmie didn't venture any farther, because he knew that the Honourable Beatrice was laughing at him, and he had never been laughed at by a woman before, and didn't know quite how to take it. He could not have been expected to understand that the Honourable Beatrice was a suffragette, and laughed at all men on general principles. Jimmie lay quietly in his bed and concealed the unworthy excitement in his soul. Wasn't that the devil now? Him, a little runt of a working man from nowhere in particular, that had been brought up on a charity-farm, and spent a good part of his life as a tramp—him to be meeting the king of England! Jimmie had a way of disposing of kings that was complete and final; he called them “kinks” and when he had called them that he had settled them, wiped them clean out. “None o' them kinks for me!” he had said to the Honourable Beatrice.
But now a “kink” was coming to the hospital! And what was Jimmie going to do? How the devil did you talk to 'em? Did yo............