And next day the King said, 'I don't know that we ought to have taken
this kingdom. We had a really high-class kingdom of our own.'
'I've been thinking that too,' said the Queen.
By this time their hands and arms and necks and faces and ears were very
sore indeed, and they were sick with want of sleep.
'Look here,' said the King, 'let's chuck it. Let's write to Ozymandias
and tell him he can take over his kingdom again. I've had jolly well
enough of this.'
'Let's,' said the Queen, 'but we can't bring the Princess to life again.
I do wish we could,' and she cried a little through her bandages into
her egg, for it was breakfast time.
'Do you mean that,' said a little sharp voice, though there was no one
to be seen in the room. The King and Queen clung to each other in
terror, upsetting the urn over the toast-rack.
'Do you mean it?' said the voice again; 'answer, yes or no.'
'Yes,' said the Queen, 'I don't know who you are, but, yes, yes, yes. I
can't _think_ how we could have been so wicked.'
'Nor I,' said the King.
'Then send for the French governess,' said the voice.
'Ring the bell, dear,' said the Queen. 'I'm sure what it says is right.
It is the voice of conscience. I've often heard _of_ it, but I never
heard it before.'
The King pulled the richly-jewelled bell-rope and ten magnificent green
and gold footmen appeared.
'Please ask Mademoiselle to step this way,' said the Queen.
The ten magnificent green and gold footmen found the governess beside
the marble basin feeding the gold-fish, and, bowing their ten green
backs, they gave the Queen's message. The governess who, every one
agreed, was always most obliging, went at once to the pink satin
breakfast-room where the King and Queen were sitting, almost
unrecognisable in their bandages.
'Yes, Your Majesties?' said she curtseying.
'The voice of conscience,' said the Queen, 'told us to send for you. Is
there any recipe in the French books for bringing shot princesses to
life? If so, will you kindly translate it for us?'
'There is _one_,' said the Princess thoughtfully, 'and it is quite
simple. Take a king and a queen and the voice of conscience. Place them
in a clean pink breakfast-room with eggs, coffee, and toast. Add a
full-sized French governess. The king and queen must be thoroughly
pricked and bandaged, and the voice of conscience must be very
distinct.'
'Is that all?' asked the Queen.
'That's all,' said the governess, 'except that the king and queen must
have two more bandages over their eyes, and keep them on till the voice
of conscience has counted fifty-five very slowly.'
'If you would be so kind,' said the Queen, 'as to bandage us with our
table napkins? Only be careful how you fold them, because our faces are
very sore, and the royal monogram is very stiff and hard owing to its
being embroidered in seed pearls by special command.'
'I will be very careful,' said the governess kindly.
The moment the King and Queen were blindfolded, the 'voice of
conscience' began, 'one, two, three,' and Ozyliza tore off her
disguise, and under the fussy black-and-violet-spotted alpaca of the
French governess was the simple slim cloth-of-silver dress of the
Princess. She stuffed the alpaca up the chimney and the grey wig into
the tea-cosy, and had disposed of the mittens in the coffee-pot and the
elastic-side boots in the coal-scuttle, just as the voice of conscience
said--
'Fifty-three, fifty-four, fifty-five!' and stopped.
The King and Queen pulled off the bandages, and there, alive and well,
with bright clear eyes and pinky cheeks and a mouth that smiled, was the
Princess whom they supposed to have been killed by the thousand arrows
of their thousand archers.
Before they had time to say a word the Princess said:
'Good morning, Your Majesties. I am afraid you have had bad dreams. So
have I. Let us all try to forget them. I hope you will stay a little
longer in my palace. You are very welcome. I am so sorry you have been
hurt.'
'We deserved it,' said the Queen, 'and we want to say we have heard the
voice of conscience, and do please forgive us.'
'Not another word,' said the Princess, '_do_ let me have some fresh tea
made. And some more eggs. These are quite cold. And the urn's been
upset. We'll have a new breakfast. And I _am_ so sorry your faces are
so sore.'
'If you kissed them,' said the voice which the King and Queen called the
voice of conscience, 'their faces would not be sore any more.'
'May I?' said Ozyliza, and kissed the King's ear and the Queen's nose,
all she could get at through the bandages.
And instantly they were quite well.
They had a delightful breakfast. Then the King caused the royal
household to assemble in the throne-room, and there announced that, as
the Princess had come to claim the kingdom, they were returning to their
own kingdom by the three-seventeen train on Thursday.
Every one cheered like mad, and the whole town was decorated and
illuminated that evening. Flags flew from every house, and the bells all
rang, just as the Princess had expected them to do that day when she
came home with the fifty-five camels. All the treasure these had carried
was given back to the Princess, and the camels themselves were restored
to her, hardly at all the worse for wear.
The usurping King and Queen were seen off at the station by the
Princess, and parted from her with real affection. You see they weren't
completely wicked in their hearts, but they had never had time to think
before. And being kept awake at night forced them to think. And the
'voice of conscience' gave them something to think about.
They gave the Princess the receipted bills, with which most of the
palace was papered, in return for board and lodging.
When they were gone a telegram was sent off.
Ozymandias Rex, Esq.,
Chatsworth,
Delamere Road,
Tooting,
England.
Please come home at once. Palace vacant. Tenants have
left.--Ozyliza P.
And they came immediately.
When they arrived the Princess told them the whole story, and they
kissed and praised her, and called her their deliverer and the saviour
of her country.
'_I_ haven't done anything,' she said. 'It was Erinaceus who did
everything, and....'
'But the fairies said,' interrupted the King, who was never clever at
the best of times, 'that you couldn't get the kingdom back till you had
a thousand spears devoted to you, to you alone.'
'There are a thousand spears in my back,' said a little sharp voice,
'and they are all devoted to the Princess and to her alone.'
'Don't!' said the King irritably. 'That voice coming out of nothing
makes me jump.'
'I can't get used to it either,' said the Queen. 'We must have a gold
cage built for the little animal. But I must say I wish it was visible.'
'So do I,' said the Princess earnestly. And instantly it was. I suppose
the Princess wished it very hard, for there was the hedge-pig with its
long spiky body and its little pointed face, its bright eyes, its small
round ears, and its sharp, turned-up nose.
It looked at the Princess but it did not speak.
'Say something _now_,' said Queen Eliza. 'I should like to _see_ a
hedge-pig speak.'
'The truth is, if speak I must, I must speak the truth,' said Erinaceus.
'The Princess has thrown away her life-wish to make me visible. I wish
she had wished instead for something nice for herself.'
'Oh, was that my life-wish?' cried the Princess. 'I didn't know, dear
Hedge-pig, I didn't know. If I'd only known, I would have wished you
back into your proper shape.'
'If you had,' said the hedge-pig, 'it would have been the shape of a
dead man. Remember that I have a thousand spears in my back, and no man
can carry those and live.'
The Princess burst into tears.
[Illustration: 'I would kiss you on every one of your thousand spears,'
she said, 'to give you what you wish.']
'Oh, you can't go on being a hedge-pig for ever,' she said, 'it's not
fair. I can't bear it. Oh Mamma! Oh Papa! Oh Benevola!'
And there stood Benevola before them, a little dazzling figure with blue
butterfly's wings and a wreath of moonshine.
'Well?' she said, 'well?'
'Oh, you know,' said the Princess, still crying. 'I've thrown away my
life-wish, and he's still a hedge-pig. Can't you do _anything_!'
'_I_ can't,' said the Fairy, 'but you can. Your kisses are magic kisses.
Don't you remember how you cured the King and Queen of all the wounds
the hedge-pig made by rolling itself on to their faces in the night?'
'But she can't go kissing hedge-pigs,' said the Queen, 'it would be most
unsuitable. Besides it would hurt her.'
But the hedge-pig raised its little pointed face, and the Princess took
it up in her hands. She had long since learned how to do this without
hurting either herself or it. She looked in its little bright eyes.
'I would kiss you on every one of your thousand spears,' she said, 'to
give you what you wish.'
'Kiss me once,' it said, 'where my fur is soft. That is all I wish, and
enough to live and die for.'
She stooped her head and kissed it on its forehead where the fur is
soft, just where the prickles begin.
And instantly she was standing with her hands on a young man's shoulders
and her lips on a young man's face just where the hair begins and the
forehead leaves off. And all round his feet lay a pile of fallen arrows.
She drew back and looked at him.
'Erinaceus,' she said, 'you're different--from the baker's boy I mean.'
'When I was an invisible hedge-pig,' he said, 'I knew everything. Now I
have forgotten all that wisdom save only two things. One is that I am a
king's son. I was stolen away in infancy by an unprincipled baker, and I
am really the son of that usurping King whose face I rolled on in the
night. It is a painful thing to roll on your father's face when you are
all spiky, but I did it, Princess, for your sake, and for my father's
too. And now I will go to him and tell him all, and ask his
forgiveness.'
'You won't go away?' said the Princess. 'Ah! don't go away. What shall I
do without my hedge-pig?'
Erinaceus stood still, looking very handsome and like a prince.
'What is the other thing that you remember of your hedge-pig wisdom?'
asked the Queen curiously. And Erinaceus answered, not to her but to the
Princess:
'The other thing, Princess, is that I love you.'
'Isn't there a third thing, Erinaceus?' said the Princess, looking down.
'There is, but you must speak that, not I.'
'Oh,' said the Princess, a little disappointed, 'then you knew that I
loved you?'
'Hedge-pigs are very wise little beasts,' said Erinaceus, 'but I only
knew that when you told it me.'
'I--told you?'
'When you kissed my little pointed face, Princess,' said Erinaceus, 'I
knew then.'
'My goodness gracious me,' said the King.
'Quite so,' said Benevola, 'and I wouldn't ask _any one_ to the
wedding.'
'Except you, dear,' said the Queen.
'Well, as I happened to be passing ... there's no time like the
present,' said Benevola briskly. 'Suppose you give orders for the
wedding bells to be rung now, at once!'
V