Part 37 (1/2)

_2nd Prince_: The time pa.s.ses so quietly and peaceably it does not feel like a year and a day since they came here before.

_Servant_: No wonder the time to pa.s.s easy and quiet where you are, with comfort all around you, and nothing to mark its course, and every season feeling the same as another, within the gla.s.s walls and the crystal roof of this place. And the old Queen, your G.o.dmother, sending her own Chamberlain to take charge of you, and to be your Guardian, and Governor of the Island. Sure, the wind itself must slacken coming to this sheltered place.

_3rd Prince_: That is a great thing. I would not wish the rough wind to be blowing upon me.

_4th Prince_: Or the dust to be rising and coming in among us to spoil our suits.

_5th Prince_: Or to be walking out on the hard roads, or climbing over stone walls, or tearing ourselves in hedges.

_1st Prince_: That is the reason we were sent here by the Queen, our G.o.dmother, in place of being sent to any school. To be kept safe and secure.

_2nd Prince_: Not to be running here and there like our own poor five first cousins, that used to be slipping out and rambling in their young youth, till they were swallowed up by the sea.

_3rd Prince_: It was maybe by some big fish of the sea.

_2nd Prince_: It might be they were brought away by sea-robbers coming in a s.h.i.+p.

_3rd Prince_: Foolish they were and very foolish not to stay in peace and comfort in the house where they were safe.

_Servant_: There is no fear of _ye_ stirring from where you are, having every whole thing ye can wish.

_4th Prince_: Here is the Guardian coming!

(_They all rise_.)

_Guardian_: (_A very old man, much enc.u.mbered with wraps, coming slowly in_.) Are you all here, all the five of you?

_All_: We are here!

_Guardian_: (_Standing, leaning on a stick, to address them_.) It's a pity that these being holidays, your teachers and tutors are far away.

Gone off afloat in a cedar boat to a College of Learning out in Cathay.

_1st Prince_: It's a pity indeed they're not here to-day.

_Guardian_: For it's likely you looked in your almanacs, or judged by the shape of the lessening moon, That your G.o.dmother's Dowager Messengers are due to arrive this afternoon.

_2nd Prince_: We did and we think they'll be here very soon.

_Guardian_: But I know they'll be glad that each royal lad, put under my rule in place of a school, Can fas.h.i.+on his life without trouble or strife, and be s.h.i.+elded from care in a nice easy chair.

_3rd Prince_: As we always are and we always were.

_Guardian_: It is part of my knowledge that lads in a college, and made play one and all with a bat and a ball, Come often to harm with a knock on the arm, and their hands get as hard as the hands of a clown.

_4th Prince_: But ours are as soft as thistledown.

_Guardian_: And I've seen young princes not far from your age, go chasing beasts on a winter day, And carted home with a broken bone, and a yard of a doctor's bill to pay; Or going to sail in the teeth of a gale, when the waves were rising mountains high, Or fall from a height that was near out of sight, robbing rooks from their nest in a poplar tree.

_5th Prince: (To another_.) But that never happened to you or me.