In Royalty's Presence

-- Paul Duggan and Steve Vogel

At Children's Hospital, all was sparkling and ready for the queen's visit yesterday afternoon. Nurses with cellphone cameras crowded roped-off corridors, waiting for a photo op. Patients in the atrium decorated cookies in the shape of crowns and ( yes!) a frog prince.

Upstairs on the cardiac ward, visitors Claire and Audrey Lyhus, who had been frantically practicing curtsies, switched to a modest head bob, their mother having decreed that more suitable for all-American girls from Rockville, ages 7 and 9. "Just bow your head and say, 'My name is Claire,' " instructed Janet Lyhus, a school counselor.

Then came the magic moment: Her Majesty arrived. She walked right into the playroom, looking smaller than imagined. She was trailed by a smiling first lady Laura Bush.

After an official greeting from hospital doctors, the queen caught sight of the Lyhus sisters' blond little brother, Evan, 1, who is being treated for a heart defect.

How long has he been a patient? she asked his dad, Bret. He told her Evan been doing well since his first surgery: "He's got lots of energy."

"Yes, he's jolly," she pronounced with a slight smile.

The 81-year-old queen looked in good spirits herself, more cheerful than one might expect at the end of a state visit that included stops in three states and the District.

"Next, she's going to go to the World War II Memorial," Laura Bush told bystanders. "I'm going to go and take a nap!"

After the playroom, the queen breezed through the atrium, filled with doctors, patients and the mayor on the first floor. In lieu of "Rule Britannia," she was serenaded with Charlie Brown's theme song. Above, children on upper floors crowded the windows to get a look. The queen looked up, smiled and waved.

Former patient Matthew Morgan, 12, of Potomac told the queen privately how last year he'd been in a coma for two weeks after a skateboarding accident.

"She said, 'Well, you're very lucky,' " he said. "I was just trying to stay cool."