Page:The Princess and Curdie.djvu/165

 of love to him. But just for the time he thought it better to say nothing on either point.

"Does the king wander like this every night?" he asked.

"Every night," answered Irene, shaking her head mournfully. "That is why I never go to bed at night. He is better during the day—a little, and then I sleep—in the dressing-room there, to be with him in a moment if he should call me. It is so sad he should have only me and not my mamma! A princess is nothing to a queen!"

"I wish he would like me," said Curdie, "for then I might watch by him at night, and let you go to bed, princess."

"Don't you know then?" returned Irene, in wonder " How was it you came?—Ah! you said my grandmother sent you. But I thought you knew that he wanted you."

And again she opened wide her blue stars.

"Not I," said Curdie, also bewildered, but very glad.

"He used to be constantly saying—he was not so ill then as he is now—that he wished he had you about him."

"And I never to know it!" said Curdie, with displeasure.

"The master of the horse told papa's own secretary that he had written to the miner-general to find you and send you up; but the miner-general wrote back to the