Finally they had drawn near enough that it was no longer the done thing for them to acknowledge anyone other than their (as yet uncrowned) King. For once Daniel got precedence over Roger, because of being a Regent; and his majesty even recognized him. "Dr. Vaterhouse of der Royal Society," he rattled off, as he allowed Daniel to kiss his hand—the very last occasion, or so Daniel hoped, that Daniel would ever give his Puritan ancestors occasion to roll over in their graves. Daniel was so consumed by the horror of what he was doing, and by wondering whether he was going to catch anything from that hand, which had already been kissed, today, by half of the syphilitics in England, that he failed to attend to what the King was saying. The problem was that his majesty had jumped over to some other language—some language, that is, that he actually spoke—and Daniel had not kept up—had not re-tuned his ear to follow it. With his unkissed left hand, George was gesturing toward the windows in the back, or south wall of the house, which provided a pleasant enough view over a rising green lawn, crossed here and there by paths, and tufted with carefully managed outbreaks of trees. Jutting from the biggest and most elevated of these, off to the right, was the queer edifice known as the Royal Observatory: two bookends imprisoning one book. But other than that, few buildings were visible, as the whole point was for it to be a park.