able look to excuse himself for being there.

Then the Queen did her best to cover matters; but it was not a great
success. "I knew that she wanted to get home," she murmured. "And she is
so impulsive; sometimes there is no holding her at all."

"I must apologize," said the King. "This is really quite unaccountable."

The Prince's eye flashed with a curious light; he smiled good-humoredly.

"I think it is very interesting," said he. "When will it be allowed that
I shall see her?"

CHAPTER XIII

A PROMISSORY NOTE

I

On their return to Jingalo the Princess heard from her parents how badly
she had behaved.

"But I had to do it!" she protested. "After what that paper had said,
and all the other things, how else could I show that I hadn't come on
purpose?"

"And pray, do you always mean running away from him?" inquired the
Queen.

"I shan't go to Bad-as-Bad again, I know that."

"But if he comes here."

"Why, are you going to ask him?"

"He has asked himself," said her father.

"Oh!" This came as a surprise.

"But, of course," he continued, "if you mean to go on being rude to him,
it wouldn't do."

"I have never been rude to him!" protested Charlotte. "I only refused to
be trapped into meeting him. I shouldn't have minded if it had just been
by accident; but it wasn't."

"I'm afraid it can never be by accident now," replied her father. "But
you needn't be here when he arrives, or when he goes; though in between
whiles, of course, you would have to meet him. And then--well, if you
wanted to see more of each other--he might come again."

Charlotte showed her distaste for any temporizing of that sort. "The
only difference I can see," she remarked, "is that first you were for
offering me to him openly and now I'm to be a sandwich."

"You are not to be anything you don't like, my dear," said her father
with gentleness. "But you know, child, we have not the whole world to
choose from; being kings and queens and princesses doesn't make life a
fairy tale."

"But it does, when we have to end by marrying princes. That's the bother
of it."

"Well, I am trying to make it easier for you. Oh, I admit the drawbacks;
but why make them out worse than they are?"

Charlotte's moods always softened under her father's cajolery; not that
she was more fond of him than of her mother; but these two had more
ground for mutual sympathy and understanding; and pity for his vaguely
harassed countenance was nev