_Why do they march so fearless and so bold?_
_The answer is not very quickly told._
_To put it shortly, the Barodian king_
_Insulted Merriwig like anything--_
_King Merriwig, the dignified and wise,_
_Who saw him flying over with surprise,_
_As did his daughter, Princess Hyacinth._

This was as far as she had got.

She left the table and began to walk round her garden. There is
nothing like it for assisting thought. However, to-day it was not
helping much; she went three times round and still couldn't think of a
rhyme for Hyacinth. "Plinth" was a little difficult to work in;
"besides," she reminded herself, "I don't quite know what it means."
Belvane felt as I do about poetry: that however incomprehensible it
may be to the public, the author should be quite at ease with it.

She added up the lines she had written already--seventeen. If she
stopped there, it would be the only epic that had stopped at the
seventeenth line.

She sighed, stretched her arms, and looked up at the sky. The weather
was all against her. It was the ideal largesse morning. . . .

Twenty minutes later she was on her cream-white palfrey. Twenty-one
minutes later Henrietta Crossbuns had received a bag of gold neatly
under the eye, as she bobbed to her Ladyship. To this extent only did
H. Crossbuns leave her mark upon Euralian history; but it was a mark
which lasted for a full month.

Hyacinth knew nothing of all this. She did not even know that Belvane
was entering for the prize poem. She had forgotten her promise to
encourage literature in the realm.

And why? Ah, ladies, can you not guess why? She was thinking of
Prince Udo of Araby. What did he look like? Was he dark or fair?
Did his hair curl naturally or not?

Was he wondering at all what _she_ looked like?

Wiggs had already decided that he was to fall in love with her Royal
Highness and marry her.

"I think," said Wiggs, "that he'll be very tall, and have lovely blue
eyes and golden hair."

This is what they were like in all the books she had ever dusted; like
this were the seven Princes (now pursuing perilous adventures in
distant countries) to whom the King had promised Hyacinth's
hand--Prince Hanspatch of Tregong, Prince Ulric, the Duke of
Highanlow, and all the rest of them. Poor Prince Ulric! In the
moment of victory he was accidentally fallen upon by the giant whom he
was engaged in undermining, and lost all appetite for adventure