The great white-and-gold throne-room brilliant with light, the
glitter of the uniforms, and the sparkle of the jewels were
attractive from their very novelty to a ten-year-old schoolboy,
perhaps a little overwhelmed by his own gorgeous and unfamiliar
trappings. We two pages had been ordered to stand quite
motionless, one on either side of the throne, but as the evening
wore on and we began to feel sleepy, it was difficult to carry our
instructions into effect, for there were no facilities for playing
even a game of "oughts and crosses" in order to keep awake. The
position had its drawbacks, as we were so very conspicuous in our
new uniforms. A detail which sticks in my memory is that the
guests at that Drawing-Room drank over three hundred bottles of my
father's sherry, in addition to other wines.
My brother and I were not allowed in the throne-room on ordinary
days, but it offered such wonderful opportunities for processions
and investitures, with the sword of state and the mace lying ready
to one's hand in their red velvet cradles, that we soon discovered
a back way into it.
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