“‘It comes back to me now!’ he sighed.  ’I did love the Lady Nancibel passionately, and I cannot think how it slipped my mind!’

“‘I release you willingly!’ exclaimed the Crown Princess Kitty haughtily, ’for a million suitors await my nod, and thou wert never really mine!’

“‘But the other lady rejects me also!’ responds the luckless youth, the tears flowing from his eagle eyes onto his crimson mantle.

“’Wilt delay the nuptials until I am eighteen and the castle is set in order?’ asks the Lady Nancibel relentingly.

“‘Since it must be, I do pledge thee my vow to wait,’ says the Knight.  ’And I do beg the fair one with the golden locks to consider the claims of my brother, not my equal perhaps, but still a gallant youth.’

“’I will enter him on my waiting list as number Three Hundred and Seventeen,’ responds the Crown Princess Kitty, than whom no violet could be more shy. ‘’Tis all he can expect and more than I should promise.’

“So they all lived in the yellow castle in great happiness forever after, and were buried by the shores of the shining river of Beulah!—­Does that suit you better?”

“Simply lovely!” cried Kitty, “and the bit about my modesty is too funny for words!—­Oh, if some of it would only happen!  But I am afraid Gilbert will not stir up any fairy stories and set them going.”

“Some of it will happen!” exclaimed Peter.  “I shall dig every single day till I find the gold-pots.”

“You are a pot of gold yourself, filled full and running over!”

“Now, Nancy, run and write down your fairy tale while you remember it!” said Mother Carey.

“It is as good an exercise as any other, and you still tell a story far better than you write it!”

Nancy did this sort of improvising every now and then, and had done it from earliest childhood; and sometimes, of late, Mother Carey looked at her eldest chicken and wondered if after all she had hatched in her a bird of brighter plumage or rarer song than the rest, or a young eagle whose strong wings would bear her to a higher flight!

IX

GILBERT’S EMBASSY

The new station had just been built in Boston, and it seemed a great enterprise to Gilbert to be threading his way through the enormous spaces, getting his information by his own wits and not asking questions like a stupid schoolboy.  Like all children of naval officers, the Careys had travelled ever since their birth; still, this was Gilbert’s first journey alone, and nobody was ever more conscious of the situation, nor more anxious to carry it off effectively.

He entered the car, opened his bag, took out his travelling cap and his copy of “Ben Hur,” then threw the bag in a lordly way into the brass rack above the seat.  He opened his book, but immediately became interested in a young couple just in front of him.  They were carefully dressed, even to details of hats and gloves, and they had an unmistakable air of wedding journey about them that interested the curious boy.