the only baby that there ever was
at our house, and I have hardly ever had anything to do with a real
live baby."

"You've had something to do with them that was not alive, haven't
you?" the Queen asked.

Kathleen smiled a little at that. "There were fifteen of them, I
think," she said.

"Well, you'll be having no more trouble with this one," the Queen
said, "than with any of those fifteen. Only do as you're told. I can't
take care of it myself, because it's the law that it must have a nurse
that's a mort--I mean it must have a nurse from outside this place.
There's the baby in the cradle there. Try can you make him go to
sleep."

Kathleen went to the cradle and looked at the baby. It was wide awake
and it stared at her like a little owl. Except for that, it looked
like any other baby. The way that the baby stared at her came nearer
to making Kathleen afraid than anything that she had seen yet. But she
took him out of the cradle, sat down on a low seat that she found,
began to rock him gently, and sang an old song that her grandmother
used to sing to her and that she had sung to her own fifteen babies
many a time.

It was scarcely an instant before the baby was asleep. She put him
back into the cradle and then turned to the Queen and said: "Shall I
do anything more?"

"Not now," said the King; "come now and have something to eat and
drink with us."

The Queen started at this and cried: "No, no!" but Kathleen did not
know what she meant. She knew that she was very hungry, and she
followed the King out of the room, back into the hall. Tables had been
brought into the hall now, and they were all covered with things to
eat that looked very good, and the men and women were sitting at the
tables, eating and drinking and talking and laughing. They all stood
up as the King came in, and waited till he had taken his place at the
head of the table, and then they all sat down again, and the eating
and drinking and talking and laughing went on.

One of the men led Kathleen to a seat and put something to eat and
drink before her. She did not know what it was, but it looked good.
She was just going to taste it, when somebody touched her on the
shoulder and somebody said: "Don't eat that; don't taste a bit of it."

She looked around and saw a boy--perhaps she would have said a young
man--standing behind her. He was very different from all the other
men. He did not look old, as they did. She thought that he was of
about h