Part 6 (1/2)

The mellow amber tottered and quivered for a while and was gone; even the solid creamy marble was hacked in pieces and absorbed; nothing, however beautiful or fantastic, escaped instant annihilation between those terrible bars of scarlet and flas.h.i.+ng ivory.

Could this be Fairyland, this plain where all things beautiful were doomed--or had they brought him back to his kingdom only to make this cruel fun of him, and destroy his riches one by one before his eyes?

But before he could find any answers to these sad questions he chanced to look straight in front of him, and there he saw a face which made his little sugar heart almost melt within him, with a curious feeling, half pleasure, half pain, that was quite new to him.

It was a girl's face, of course, and the prince had not looked at her very long before he forgot all about his kingdom.

He was relieved to see that she at least was too generous to join in the work of destruction that was going on all around her--indeed, she seemed to dislike it as much as he did himself, for only a little of the tinted snow pa.s.sed her soft lips.

Now and then she laughed a little silvery laugh, and shook out her rippling gold-brown hair at something the being next to her said--a great boy-mortal, with a red face, bold eyes, and grasping brown hands, which were fatal to everything within their range.

How the prince did hate that boy!--he found to his joy that he could understand what they said, and began to listen jealously to their conversation.

'I say,' the boy (whose name, it seemed, was Bertie) was saying, as he received a plateful of floating fragments of the lacework palace, 'you aren't eating anything, Mabel. Don't you care about suppers? _I_ do.'

'I'm not hungry,' she said, evidently feeling this a distinction; 'I've been out so much this fortnight.'

'How jolly!' he observed, 'I only wish _I_ had. But I say,' he added 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 appet.i.te 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 Sat.u.r.days--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 pa.s.sages 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.'