Page:I Know a Secret (1927).pdf/89

 all. She explains that: there was something hard in the bed that bruised her black and blue. Then they know she was a real Princess: only a royal person could have a skin so tender.

So that was the Pea Princess. But Jack came from quite a different story. He was just a plain country boy, though brave and steady. He was the boy who climbed the bean-stalk and outwitted the giant. He was not handsome. He tried to pretend it was the warm weather that had lengthened his paraffin face into such a soft and melancholy expression. But it was not the warm weather, it was love.

Jack was too shy to tell the Pea Princess how he felt about her. Besides, he knew very well that they belonged in two entirely different stories, and there is nothing so difficult as getting out of your own story and into someone else's. But it would be silly to suppose that Sweet Pea (as he called her) was not aware of his condition. Even if she had not guessed it, some of the other puppets would have told her. As they all lay there, jumbled together in the box, she could feel his admiring eye always fixed upon her. This was not unpleasant, for young women enjoy being admired. But the truth is, she was so very un-