Page:Stevenson - Prince Otto. A Romance.djvu/42

 food so bedevilled by unskilful cookery that no one could be brought to eat the pudding? That is me, my dear. I am full of good ingredients, but the dish is worthless. I am—I give it you in one word—sugar in the salad.’

‘Well, I don’t care, you’re good,’ reiterated Ottilia, a little flushed by having failed to understand.

‘I will tell you one thing,’ replied Otto: ‘You are!’

‘Ah, well, that’s what they all said of you,’ moralised the girl; ‘such a tongue to come round—such a flattering tongue!’

‘O, you forget, I am a man of middle age,’ the Prince chuckled.

‘Well, to speak to you, I should think you was a boy; and Prince or no Prince, if you came worrying where I was cooking, I would pin a napkin to your tails… And, O Lord, I declare I hope your Highness will forgive me,’ the girl added. ‘I can’t keep it in my mind.’

‘No more can I,’ cried Otto. ‘That is just what they complain of!’

They made a loverly-looking couple; only the heavy pouring of that horse-tail of water made them raise their voices above lovers’ pitch. But to a jealous onlooker from above, their mirth and close proximity might easily give umbrage; and a rough voice out of a tuft of