confidentially, 'won't they make you take a grey powder soon? They would
_me_.'
'I'm never made to take anything at all nasty,' she said--and the prince
was indignant that any one should have dared to think otherwise.
'I suppose,' continued the boy, 'you didn't manage to get any of that
cake the conjurer made in Uncle John's hat, did you?'
'No, indeed,' she said, and made a little face; 'I don't think I should
like cake that came out of anybody's hat!'
'It was very decent cake,' he said; 'I got a lot of it. I was afraid it
might spoil my appetite for supper--but it hasn't.'
'What a very greedy boy you are, Bertie,' she remarked; 'I suppose you
could eat _anything_?'
'At home I think I could, pretty nearly,' he said, with a proud
confidence, 'but not at old Tokoe's, I can't. Tokoe's is where I go to
school, you know. I can't stand the resurrection-pie on Saturdays--all
the week they save up the bones and rags and things, and when it comes
up----'
'I don't want to hear,' she interrupted; 'you talk about nothing but
horrid things to eat, and it isn't a bit interesting.'
Bertie allowed himself a brief interval for refreshment unalloyed by
conversation, after which he began again: 'Mabel, if they have dancing
after supper, dance with me.'
'Are you sure you know _how_ to dance?' she inquired rather
fastidiously.
'Oh, I can get through all right,' he replied. 'I've learnt. It's not
harder than drilling. I can dance the Highland Schottische and the
Swedish dance, any-way.'
'Any one can dance those. I don't call that dancing,' she said.
'Well, but try me once, Mabel; say you will,' said he.
'I don't believe they will have dancing,' she said; 'there are so many
very young children here and they get in the way so. But I hope there
won't be any more games--games are stupid.'
'Only to girls,' said Bertie; 'girls never care about any fun.'
'Not _your_ kind of fun,' she said, a little vaguely. 'I don't mind
hide-and-seek in a nice old house with long passages and dark corners
and secret panels--and ghosts even--that's jolly; but I don't care much
about running round and round a row of silly chairs, trying to sit down
when the music stops and keep other people out--I call it rude.'
'You didn't seem to think it so rude just now,' he retorted; 'you were
laughing quite as much as any one; and I saw you push young Bobby Meekin
off the last chair of all, and sit on it yourself, anyhow.'
'Bertie, you didn't,' she cried, flushing angrily.
'I did though.'
'But I tell you I _didn't_!
'And _I_ say you _did_!'
'If you will go on saying I did, when I'm quite sure I never did
anything of the sort,' she said, 'please don't speak to me again; I
shan't answer if you do. And I think you're a particularly ill-bred
boy--not polite, like my brothers.'
'Your brothers are every bit as rude as I am. If they aren't, they're
milksops--I should be sorry to be a milksop.'
'My brothers are not milksops--they could fight _you_!' she cried, with
a little defiant ring in her voice that the prince thought perfectly
charming.
'As if a girl knew anything about fighting,' said Bertie; 'why, I could
fight your brothers all stuck in a row!'
'_That_ you couldn't,' from Mabel, and 'I could then, so _now_!' from
Bertie, until at last Mabel refused to answer any more of Bertie's
taunts, as they grew decidedly offensive; and, finding that she took
refuge in disdainful silence, he consumed tart after tart with gloomy
determination.
And then all at once, Mabel, having nothing to do, chanced to look
across to the white dome on which the prince was standing, and she
opened her beautiful grey eyes with a pleased surprise as she saw him.
All this time the prince had been falling deeper and deeper in love with
her; at first he had felt almost certain that she was a princess and his
destined bride; he was rather small for her, certainly, though he did
not know how _very_ much smaller he was; but Fairyland, he had always
been told, was full of resources--he could easily be filled out to her
size, or, better still, she might be brought down to _his_.
But he had begun to give up these wild fancies already, and even to fear
that she would go away without having once noticed him; and now she was
looking at him as if she found him pleasant to look at, as if she would
like to know him.
At last, evidently after some struggle, she turned to the offending
Bertie, and spoke his name softly; but Bertie could not give up the
luxury of sulking with her all at once, and so he looked another way.
'Is it _Pax_, Bertie?' she asked. (She had not had brothers for
nothing.)
'No, it isn't,' said Bertie.
'Oh, you want to sulk? I thought only girls sulked,' she said; 'but it
doesn't matter, I only wanted to tell you something.'
His curiosity was too much for his dignity. 'Well--what?' he asked,
gruffly enough.
'Only,' she said, 'that I've been thinking over things, and I dare say
you _could_ fight my brothers--only not all together and I'm not sure
that Charlie wouldn't beat you.'
'Charlie! I could settle him in five minutes,' muttered Bertie, only
half appeased.
'Oh, not in _five_, Bertie,' cried Mabel, 'ten, perhaps; but you'd never
want to, would you, when he's _my_ brother? And now,' she added, 'we're
friends again, aren't we, Bertie?'
He was a cynic in his way--'I see,' he said, 'you want something out of
me; you should have thought of that before you quarrelled, you know!'
Mabel contracted her eyebrows and bit her lip for a moment, then she
said meekly--
'I know I should, Bertie; but I thought perhaps you wouldn't mind doing
this for me. I can ask the boy on my other side--he's a stupid-looking
boy, and I don't care about knowing him--still, if _you_ won't do
it----'
'Oh, well, _I_ don't mind,' he said, softened at once. 'What is it you
want?'
'Bertie,' she whispered breathlessly, 'you'll be quite a nice boy if
you'll only get me that dear little sugar prince off the cake there; you
can reach him better than I can, and--and I don't quite like to--only,
be quick, or some one else will get him first.'
And in another second the enraptured prince found himself lying on her
plate!
'Isn't he lovely?' she cried.
'Not bad,' said Bertie; 'give us a bit--_I_ got him for you, you know.'
'_Give you a bit!_' she cried, with the keenest horror and disgust.
'Bertie! you don't really think I wanted him to--to eat.'
'Oh, the paint doesn't matter,' he said; 'I've eaten lots of them.'
'You really are too horrid,' she said; 'all you think about is eating
things. I can't bear greedy boys. I won't have anything to do with you
any more; after this we'll be perfect strangers.'
He stared helplessly at her; he had made friends and done all she asked
of him, and, just because he begged for a share in the spoil, she had
treated him like this! It was too bad of her--it served him right for
bothering about a girl.
He would have told her what he thought about it, only just then there
was a general rising. The prince was carried tenderly upstairs,
entrusted with many cautions to a trim maid, and laid to rest wrapped in
a soft lace handkerchief upon a dressing-table, to dream of the new life
in store for him to the accompaniment of faintly heard music and
laughter from below.
He had given up all his old ideas of recovering his kingdom and marrying
a princess--very likely he might not be a fairy prince after all, and he
felt now that he did not very much care if he wasn't.
He was going to be Mabel's for evermore, and that was worth all
Fairyland to him. How bewitching her anger had been when Bertie
suspected her of wanting the prince for her own eating. (The prince had
already found out that eating meant the way in which these ruthless
mortals made everything beautiful pass away between their sharp teeth.)
She had pitied and protected him; might she not some day come to _love_
him? If he had only known what a little sugar fool he was making of
himself, I think he would certainly have dissolved into syrup for very
shame.
Mabel came up to fetch him at last; they had fastened something white
and fleecy round her head and shoulders, and her face was flushed and
her eyes seemed a darker grey as she took him out of the handkerchief,
with a cry of delight at finding him quite safe, and hurried downstairs
with him.
While she was waiting in the hall for her carriage, the prince heard the
last of Bertie; he came up to her and whispered spitefully, 'Well,
you've kept your word, you've not looked at me since supper, all because
I thought you meant to eat that sugar thing off the cake! Now I just
tell you this--you needn't pretend you don't like sweets--I wouldn't
give much for that figure's lasting a week, _now_!'
She only glanced at him with calm disdain, and passed on under the
awning to her carriage, where her brothers were waiting for her, and
Bertie was left with a recollection that would make his first fortnight
under old Tokoe's roof even bitterer than usual to him.
What a deliciously dreamy drive home that was for the prince; he lay
couched on Mabel's soft palm, thinking how cool and satiny it was, and
how different from the hot coarse hands which had touched him hitherto.
She said nothing to her brothers, who were curled up, grey indistinct
forms, opposite; she sat quietly at the side of the servant who had come
to fetch them, and now and then in the faint light the prince could see
her smiling with half-shut sleepy eyes at some pleasant recollection.
If that drive could only have gone on for ever! but it came to an end
soon, very soon.
A little later his tired little protectress placed him where she could
see him when first she awoke the next day, and all that night the prince
stood on guard upon the high mantelpiece in the night nursery, thinking
of the kiss, half-childish and half-playful, she had given him just
before she left him at his post.
* * * * *
The next morning Mabel woke up tired, and, if it must be confessed, a
little cross; but the prince thought she looked lovelier than even on
the night before, in her plain dark dress and fresh white pinafore and
crossbands.
She took him down with her to breakfast, and stationed him near her
plate--and then he made a discovery.
_She_, too, could make the solid things around her vanish in the very
way of which he thought she disapproved so strongly!
It was done, as she seemed to do everything, very daintily and
prettily--but still the things _did_ disappear, somehow, and it was a
shock.
She called the attention of her governess--who was a pale lady, with a
very prominent forehead and round spectacles--to the prince's good
looks, and the governess admitted that he was pretty, but cautioned
Mabel not to eat him, as these highly-coloured confections invariably
contained deleterious matter, and were therefore unwholesome.
'Oh,' said Mabel, defending her favourite with great animation, 'but not
this one, Miss Pringle. Because I heard Mrs. Goodchild tell somebody
last night that she was always so careful to get only sweets painted
with "pure vegetable colours," she called it. But that wouldn't
matter--for of course I shall never want to _eat_ this little man!'
'Oh, of course not,' said the governess, with a smile that struck the
prince as being unpleasant--though he did not know exactly why, and he
was glad to forget it in watching the play of Mabel's pretty restless
fingers on the table-cloth.
By-and-by the nurse came in, carrying something which he had never seen
anything at all like before, and which frightened him very much. It was
called as he soon found, a 'Baby,' and it goggled round it with glassy,
meaningless eyes, and clucked fearfully somewhere deep down in its
throat, while it stretched out feeble little wrinkled hands, exactly
like yellow starfish.
'There, _there_, then!' said the nurse (which seems to be the right
thing to say to a baby). 'See, Miss Mabel, he's asking for that to play
with.'
Now _that_ happened to be the sugar prince.
Mabel seemed completely in the power of this monster, for she dared not
refuse it anything; she crossed almost timidly to it now, and laid the
prince in one of its starfish, only entreating that nurse would not
allow it to put him in its mouth.
But the baby did not try to do this; its vacant countenance only creased
into an idiotic grin, as it began to take a great deal of notice of him;
and its way of taking notice was to shake the prince violently up and
down, till he was quite giddy.
After doing this several times, it ducked him quite suddenly down,
head-foremost, into the nearest cup of tea.
The poor prince felt as if he were all softening and crumbling away into
nothing, but it was only some of the paint coming off; and before he
could be ducked a second time, Mabel, with a cry of dismay, rescued him
from the indignant baby, which howled in a dreadful manner.
She dried him tenderly on her handkerchief, and then, as she saw the
result, suddenly began to weep inconsolably herself. 'Oh, see what
Baby's done!' she gasped between her sobs; 'all his lovely complexion
ruined, spoilt ... I wish somebody would just spoil Baby's face for him,
and see how _he_ likes it.... If he isn't slapped _at once_--I'll never
love him again!'
But nobody slapped the baby--it was soothed; and, besides, all the slaps
hand could bestow would not bring back the prince's lost beauty.
His face was all the colours of the rainbow now; the yellow of his curls
had run into his forehead, his brown eyes were smudged across his nose,
and his cherry lips smeared upon his cheeks, while all the blue of his
doublet had spread up to his chin.
He knew from what they were all saying that this had happened to him,
but he did not mind it much, except at first; he had never been vain of
his beauty, and it was delightful to hear Mabel's little tender laments
over his misfortune; so long as she cared for him as he was--what did
anything else matter?
In the schoolroom that morning he leaned against her writing-desk, and
watched her turning fat books lazily over and inking her fair little
hands, until she shut them all up with an impatient bang and yawned.
Why was it that at that precise moment the prince began to feel
uncomfortable?
'Is it near dinner-time, Miss Pringle?' she asked. 'I'm so awfully
hungry!'
The governess's watch showed an hour more to wait.
'I wonder if Comfitt would give me some cake if I ran down and asked
her!' said Mabel next.
The governess thought Mabel had much better wait patiently till
dinner-time without spoiling her appetite.
'Oh, very well,' said Mabel; 'what a bore it is to be hungry too soon,
isn't it?'
Then she took the faded prince up and looked at him mournfully. 'What a
shame of Baby!' she said; 'I wanted to keep him always to look at--but I
don't see how I can very well now, do you, Miss Pringle? Do they make
these things only for ornament, should you think?'
'I think it is time you finished that exercise,' was all the governess
replied.
'Oh, I've almost done it,' said Mabel, 'and I want just to ask this
question (it comes under "general information," you know)--aren't
vegetable colours "dilly-whatever-it-is" colours I mean--harmless? And
Dr. Harley said vegetables were so very good for me. I wonder if I might
just _taste_ him.'
Here the prince's dream ended: he saw it all at last--how she had petted
and praised him only while he was pleasant to look at; and now that was
over--he was nothing more to her than something to eat.
Presently he was lifted gently between her slim finger and thumb to her
lips, and touched caressingly by something red and moist and warm behind
them. It was not unpleasant exactly, so far, but he knew that worse was
coming, and longed for her to make haste and get it over.
'Vanilla!' reported Mabel, 'that _must_ be all right, Miss Pringle. Cook
flavours corn-flour with it!'
Miss Pringle shrugged her sharp shoulders: 'You must use your own
judgment, my dear,' was all she said.
And then--I am sorry to have to tell what happened next, but this is a
true story and I must go on--then the prince saw Mabel's grey eyes
looking at him from under their long lashes with interest for the last
time, he saw two gleaming pearly rows closing upon him, he felt a sharp
pang, of grief as well as pain, as they crunched him up into small
pieces, and he slowly melted away and there was an end of him.
There is a beautiful moral belonging to this story, but it is of no use
to print it here, because it only applies to sugar princes--until Mabel
is quite grown up.
_THE RETURN OF AGAMEMNON._
[Illustration: It]
It was ten years since Agamemnon, the mighty Argive monarch, had left
his kingdom (somewhat suddenly, and after a stormy interview with the
Queen, as those said who had the best opportunities of knowing), with
the avowed intention of going to assist at the siege of Troy.
He had never written once since, but so many reports of his personal
daring and his terrible wounds had reached the palace that Clytemnestra
would often observe, with a touch of annoyance, that, if not actually
dead by that time, he must be nearly as full of holes as a fishing-net.
So that she was scarcely surprised when they broke the intelligence to
her one day that he really had gone at last, having fallen, fighting
desperately, against the most fearful odds, upon the Trojan plain; and
when, a little later, she formally announced to her faithful subjects
her betrothal to AEgisthus, her youngest and favourite courtier, _they_
were not surprised in their turn.
They told one another, with ribald facetiousness, that they had rather
expected something of the kind.
They were celebrating their Queen's betrothal day with the wildest
enthusiasm, for they were a simple affectionate people, and foresaw an
impetus to local trade. It had been but a dull time for Argos during
those weary ten years, and the city had become well-nigh deserted, as,
one by one, all her bravest and her best had left her, to seek, as they
poetically put it, 'a soldier's tomb.'
Several married men, in whom no such patriotic enthusiasm had ever been
previously suspected, found out that their country required their
services, left their wives and their little ones, and started for the
field of battle. There were many pushing Argive tradesmen, too, who
abandoned their business and sought--not ostentatiously, but with the
self-effacement of true heroism--the seat of war upon which their
sovereign had been sitting so long; while the real extent of their
devotion was seldom appreciated until long after their departure, when
it was generally discovered that, in their eagerness, they had left
their affairs in the greatest confusion.
And very soon almost the only young men left were mild, unwarlike
youths, who were respectable and wore spectacles, while the rest of the
male population was composed of equal parts of prattling infants and
doddering octogenarians.
This was a melancholy state of things--but then the absent ones wrote
such capital letters home, containing such graphic descriptions of camp
life and the fiercer excitements of night attacks and forlorn hopes,
that the recipients ought to have been amply consoled.
They were not; they only remarked that it seemed rather odd that the
writers should so persistently forget to give their addresses, and that
it was a singular circumstance that while each letter purported to come
direct from the Grecian lines, every envelope somehow bore a different
postmark. And often would the older married women (and their mothers
too) wish with infinite pathos that they could only just get the missing
ones home and talk to them a little--that was all!
But all anxiety was forgotten in the celebration of the betrothal, for
the Argives were determined to do the thing really well. So in the
principal streets they had erected triumphal arches, typifying the
chief local manufactures, which were (as it is scarcely necessary to
inform the scholar) soda-water and cane-bottomed chairs; and from these
arches chairs and bottles were constantly dropping, like a gentle dew,
upon the happy crowd which passed beneath. All the public fountains
spouted a cheap dinner sherry like water--'_very_ like water,' said some
disaffected persons; householders were graciously invited to exhibit
flags and illuminations at their own expense, and in the market-place a
fowl was being roasted whole for the populace.
All was gaiety, therefore, at sunset, when the citizens assembled in
groups about the square in front of the palace, prepared to cheer the
royal pair with enthusiasm when they deigned to show themselves upon the
balcony.
The well-meaning old gentlemen who formed the Chorus (for in those days
every house of any position in society maintained a chorus, and even
shabby-genteel families kept a semi-chorus in buttons) were twittering
in a corner, prepared to come forth by-and-by with the ill-timed
allusions, melancholy and depressing forebodings, and unnecessary
advice, which were all that was expected of them, and the Mayor and
Corporation were fussing about distractedly with a brass band and the
inevitable address.
All at once there was a stir in the crowd, and the eyes of everyone
were strained towards a tall and swaying scaffold on the royal
house-top, where a small black figure, outlined sharply against the
saffron sky, could be seen gesticulating wildly?
'Look at the watchman!' they whispered excitedly; 'what _can_ be the
matter with him?'
Now before Agamemnon left he had had fires laid upon all the mountain
tops in a straight line between Argos and Troy, arranging to light the
pile at the Troy end of the chain when it should become necessary to let
them know at home that they might expect him back shortly.
The watchman had been put up on a scaffold to look out for the beacon,
and had been there for years day and night, without being once allowed
to quit his post--even on his birthday. It was expected that
Clytemnestra would have let him come down for good when she was informed
of Agamemnon's death on such excellent authority, but she would not hear
of such a thing. She knew people would think it very foolish and
sentimental of her, she said, but to take the watchman down would seem
so like giving up all hope! So she kept him up, a proof of her conjugal
devotion which touched everyone--except perhaps the watchman himself.
Clytemnestra and AEgisthus, who had happened to come out while all this
excitement was at its height, found themselves absolutely ignored. 'Not
a single cap off--not one solitary hurray,' cried the Queen with
majestic anger. '_What_ have you been doing to make yourself so
unpopular with my loyal Argives?' she demanded suspiciously.
'I don't think it's anything to do with _me_, really,' protested
AEgisthus, feebly. 'They're only looking the other way just now,
and--can't you see why?' he added suddenly, '_they've lit the beacon on
the top of Arachnaeus_!'
Clytemnestra looked, and started violently, as on the mountain-top in
question a red tongue of flame shot up through the gathering dusk: 'What
does it mean?' she whispered, clutching him convulsively by the arm.
'Well,' said AEgisthus, 'it looks to me, do you know, rather as if your
late lamented husband has changed his mind about dying, and is on his
way to your arms.'
'Then he is not dead!' exclaimed Clytemnestra. 'He is coming home. I
shall look upon that face, hear that voice, press that hand once again!
How excessively annoying!'
'Confounded nuisance!' he agreed heartily, but his irritation sounded
slightly overdone, somehow. 'Well, it's all over with the betrothal
after this; don't you think it would be as well to get all the arches,
and fireworks, and things out of the way? We shan't want them _now_, you
know.'
'Why not?' said the Queen; 'they will all do for him; _he_ won't know.
Ye gods!' she cried, stretching out her arms with a tragic groan. 'Must
_I_, too, do for him?'
'Any way,' said AEgisthus, with an attempted ease, 'you won't want _me_
any longer, and so, if you will kindly excuse me, I--I think I'll retire
to some quiet spot whither I can drag myself with my broken heart and
bleed to death, like a wounded deer, don't you know!'
'You can do all that just as well here,' she replied. 'I wish you to
stay. Who knows what may happen?'--she added, with a sinister smile, 'We
may be happy yet!'