Page:Margaret sherwood--The Princess Pourquoi.djvu/158

, when they had talked it over as they braided one another's hair in the tiring-room of the castle, had they dreamed of anything so terrible as this.

"Wh-what put this idea into your heads?" thundered his Majesty.

Then the seven answered as one maiden: "The Princess Pourquoi."

The King groaned aloud, and the knights-at-arms and the ladies-in-waiting groaned with him. Was it not enough for him to have had a daughter whose useless thinking had embittered his reign? She, with her quick intellect and ready questions, had made his throne totter under him; and now, when she was safely married and away—ay, and had made as good a match as the dullest maid in Christendom, must