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 thereby. Indeed, in his latter years he was alarmed by anything larger than a goldfish, and lived a life of strictest seclusion.