ot improve matters.

"But nobody is forcing you to marry him," said the King. "I don't know
why it has even been mentioned." And, seeking a clue, he cast a troubled
glance at the Queen.

"It's in all the papers!" retorted Charlotte, indulging in poetic
license. "And you know it! Yes, he is coming here to look at me, to see
if he likes me, and to see if I can pretend to like him. But I won't be
looked at, it's an indignity I won't stand. I'll not even see him!"

"But why ever not?" exclaimed her father.

Charlotte wriggled with impatience.

"Oh, can't you see? Supposing he comes and does look at me; and then
goes away without--without caring!--That's what you are asking me to put
up with. For me to know, and for him to know, and for him to know that I
know! How would you like it yourself?"

"I tell her she is very ridiculous," said the Queen. "A Princess can't
marry a mushroom. Does she want to fall in love with her eyes shut.
Something has to be done beforehand, or we should never be anywhere----"

"I don't want to be anywhere," said the Princess.

"Outside a lunatic asylum," said her mother, completing the sentence.

"My dear child," put in the King, "don't you see that nothing is really
settled--and will not be until you agree to it?"

"Then why did you ever tell him anything about it? Why couldn't we have
just met? It's this picking of us out beforehand behind our backs, and
then telling us of it; that's what I can't stand!"

"My dear, nobody is forcing you," repeated the King persuasively.

"Then I won't see him."

"I tell her she must," remarked the Queen in a tone of comfortable
finality.

"Mamma, will you stop knitting!" cried Charlotte. "You treat me as if I
were an insect!"

"You have got the brains of one," retorted her mother. "John, will you
please speak to her? Perhaps you can understand what it all means; I
can't. She has been talking Greek to me--something or other about the
Trojans."

"Yes; the Trojan women," corrected Charlotte.

"She says she's like one of them!"

"So I am."

"I don't know which one, you mentioned so many."

"All of them. Yes, papa, they had to go and live with foreigners--men
they had never seen."

"Don't say 'live with'; it's an objectionable term."

"Die with them, then: some did! One of them killed a king in his bath;
at least his wife did, but it's all the same."

"Yes; she began quoting some verses to me about that bath affair," said
the Queen. "And