_ IIo PRINCE RICARDO.

 

King Prigio. The queen could not read
most of them herself, but the king used to
read them aloud to her. A good many
years had passed —seventeen, in fact —since
Queen Rosalind was married, but you would
not think it to look at her. Her grey eyes
were as kind and soft and beautiful, her dark
hair as dark, and her pretty colour as like a
white rose blushing, as on the day when she
was a bride. And she was as fond of the king
as when he was only Prince Prigio, and he was
as fond of her as on the night when he first met
her at the ball.

“No, I don’t know what to do with Dick,”
said the king.

‘He meant his son, Prince Ricardo, but he
called him Dick in private.

‘*T believe it’s the fault of his education,”’ his
Majesty went on. ‘“ We have not brought him
up rightly. These fairy books are at the bottom
- of his provoking behaviour,” and he glanced
round the shelves. ‘‘ Now, when I was a boy,
my dear mother tried to prevent me from
reading fairy books, because she did not believe
in fairies.”

‘*But she was wrong, you know,” said the
queen. ‘ Why, if it had not been for all these
fairy presents, the Cap of Darkness and all the
rest of them, you never could have killed the
Fire-beast and the Ice-beast, and—you never
could have married me,” the queen added, in a