'Then know,' said Taykin, 'that the Princess won't marry _your_ choice,
because she's made one of her own--my apprentice.'
The Princess meant to have told her father this when she had got him
alone and in a good temper. But now he was in a bad temper, and in full
audience.
The apprentice was dragged in, and all the Princess's agonized pleadings
only got this out of the King--
'All right. I won't hang him. He shall be best man at your wedding.'
Then the King took his daughter's hand and set her in the middle of the
hall, and set the Prince of the Diamond Mountains on her right and the
apprentice on her left. Then he said:
'I will spare the life of this aspiring youth on your left if you'll
promise never to speak to him again, and if you'll promise to marry the
gentleman on your right before tea this afternoon.'
The wretched Princess looked at her lover, and his lips formed the word
'Promise.'
So she said: 'I promise never to speak to the gentleman on my left and
to marry the gentleman on my right before tea to-day,' and held out her
hand to the Prince of the Diamond Mountains.
Then suddenly, in the twinkling of an eye, the Prince of the Diamond
Mountains was on her left, and her hand was held by her own Prince, who
stood at her right hand. And yet nobody seemed to have moved. It was the
purest and most high-class magic.
'Dished,' cried the King, 'absolutely dished!'
'A mere trifle,' said the apprentice modestly. 'I've got Taykin's magic
recipe book, as well as his heart.'
'Well, we must make the best of it, I suppose,' said the King crossly.
'Bless you, my children.'
He was less cross when it was explained to him that the apprentice was
really the Prince of the Fortunate Islands, and a much better match than
the Prince of the Diamond Mountains, and he was quite in a good temper
by the time the nurse threw herself in front of the throne and begged
the King to let the Magician off altogether--chiefly on the ground that
when he was a baby he was the dearest little duck that ever was, in the
prettiest plaid frock, with the loveliest fat legs.
The King, moved by these arguments, said:
'I'll spare him if he'll promise to be good.'
'You will, ducky, won't you?' said the nurse, crying.
'No,' said the Magician, 'I won't; and what's more, I can't.'
The Princess, who was now so happy that she wanted every one else to be
happy too, begged her lover to make Taykin good 'by magic.'
'Alas, my dearest Lady,' said the Prince, 'no one can be made good by
magic. I could take the badness out of him--there's an excellent recipe
in this note-book--but if I did that there'd be so very little left.'
'Every little helps,' said the nurse wildly.
Prince Fortunatus, who was James, who was the apprentice, studied the
book for a few moments, and then said a few words in a language no one
present had ever heard before.
And as he spoke the wicked Magician began to tremble and shrink.
'Oh, my boy--be good! Promise you'll be good,' cried the nurse, still
in tears.
The Magician seemed to be shrinking inside his clothes. He grew smaller
and smaller. The nurse caught him in her arms, and still he grew less
and less, till she seemed to be holding nothing but a bundle of clothes.
Then with a cry of love and triumph she tore the Magician's clothes away
and held up a chubby baby boy, with the very plaid frock and fat legs
she had so often and so lovingly described.
'I said there wouldn't be much of him when the badness was out,' said
the Prince Fortunatus.
'I will be good; oh, I will,' said the baby boy that had been the
Magician.
'I'll see to that,' said the nurse. And so the story ends with love and
a wedding, and showers of white roses.