"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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 coa.r.s.e 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 gla.s.sy, 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 n.o.body 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 appet.i.te.
"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.