Page:St. Nicholas (serial) (IA stnicholasserial321dodg).pdf/71

1904] I left my medicine in my room, and picked up my red tam-o’-shanter and put it on so that it drooped effectively over on one ear. My flowing robe was of royal red, I tossed one corner of it over my shoulder in a stagey and princely manner, There was n’t a soul in the corridor. I stood myself in front of the door of 320, and knocked in a loud and cheerful tone—though I was shaking in my slippers all the time. There was a small-sized “Come,” and I flung open the door, and scraped the floor with as majestic and sweeping a bow as I could muster,

“I am the prince,” I said.

Would you believe it? She hardly moved, but just looked up and stared at me with that blank, impersonal gaze of hers, that we all knew so well; and there I stood, like a ninny, with my tam-o’-shanter on one ear and my bath-robe festooned over my shoulder!

I dropped the prince. I sputtered out: “Natalie Prentiss, I never felt so like a perfect idiot in my life! For mercy's sake laugh, or I ’ll never forgive you!” And laugh she did, thank goodness! I plumped down on one knee and repeated: “I am the prince, and I ’ve come to see about that little matter of your not speaking, princess. The enchantment is quite, quite over, and you ‘re going to talk and tell me all about it. In fact, you must. It ’s your love or your life, princess, for I ’ve come to stay!” The princess somehow contrived to melt down upon my neck from above—I was kneeling by her chair.

“Oh, I love you,” she said; “I always have, since the first day. I think you ’re the dearest girl in school, Harry—prince.”

This is the end—abrupt, I know, but that ’s what ends ought to be, Miss Noble says. It is not really the end, because, as I said at first, all this happened last year, and now it ’s the fall of another year. Little X has just suggested, by the way, that I begin to attach myself to my geometry.

That ’s Little X over there in the camp-chair with her feet on the Latin dictionary—looks pretty happy, does n’t she? I tell her that she talks me nearly deaf—that if I were looking around for a princess again, I ’d never take a silent one.

Yes, Little X is my room-mate, and what more would you have?