A young boy laid low by accident discovers that a kingdom can fit inside a hospital cot. Reginald Fairfax has broken his leg, but his friends Nan and Harry refuse to let his spirits match his body. They devise an elaborate game of make-believe: Regie shall be a king, and they his loyal bodyguard, sworn to serve the little monarch through pillow forts and imaginative adventures. What begins as a tender diversion becomes something deeper: a fragile boy learning to hold his head high, an adopted child with a sensitive heart finding acceptance and belonging. Ruth Ogden writes with the gentle wisdom of an era that understood children are not small adults but whole persons with their own sorrows and joys. The story captures that liminal space of childhood illness where time slows and the world contracts to a sickroom, yet imagination expands to fill every gap. This is a quiet Victorian gem about the healing that happens when love arrives in the form of devoted friends who refuse to let you face your convalescence alone.
