Part 31 (1/2)
Then the Queen did her best to cover matters; but it was not a great success. ”I knew that she wanted to get home,” she murmured. ”And she is so impulsive; sometimes there is no holding her at all.”
”I must apologize,” said the King. ”This is really quite unaccountable.”
The Prince's eye flashed with a curious light; he smiled good-humoredly.
”I think it is very interesting,” said he. ”When will it be allowed that I shall see her?”
CHAPTER XIII
A PROMISSORY NOTE
I
On their return to Jingalo the Princess heard from her parents how badly she had behaved.
”But I had to do it!” she protested. ”After what that paper had said, and all the other things, how else could I show that I hadn't come on purpose?”
”And pray, do you always mean running away from him?” inquired the Queen.
”I shan't go to Bad-as-Bad again, I know that.”
”But if he comes here.”
”Why, are you going to ask him?”
”He has asked himself,” said her father.
”Oh!” This came as a surprise.
”But, of course,” he continued, ”if you mean to go on being rude to him, it wouldn't do.”
”I have never been rude to him!” protested Charlotte. ”I only refused to be trapped into meeting him. I shouldn't have minded if it had just been by accident; but it wasn't.”
”I'm afraid it can never be by accident now,” replied her father. ”But you needn't be here when he arrives, or when he goes; though in between whiles, of course, you would have to meet him. And then--well, if you wanted to see more of each other--he might come again.”
Charlotte showed her distaste for any temporizing of that sort. ”The only difference I can see,” she remarked, ”is that first you were for offering me to him openly and now I'm to be a sandwich.”
”You are not to be anything you don't like, my dear,” said her father with gentleness. ”But you know, child, we have not the whole world to choose from; being kings and queens and princesses doesn't make life a fairy tale.”
”But it does, when we have to end by marrying princes. That's the bother of it.”
”Well, I am trying to make it easier for you. Oh, I admit the drawbacks; but why make them out worse than they are?”
Charlotte's moods always softened under her father's cajolery; not that she was more fond of him than of her mother; but these two had more ground for mutual sympathy and understanding; and pity for his vaguely hara.s.sed countenance was never far absent from her heart.
”I am having just now,” the King went on, ”a very trying and disturbing time--in ways that I don't want to talk about. Do try, child, not to add to my anxieties.”