Nan looking at her one day as she was hovering over her grandfather said: "And so the princess came into her own and lived in great state ever after at the castle."
Miss Helen nodded understandingly. "Until——" she suggested a continuation.
Nan took up the tale: "Until a prince came that way and asked her hand in marriage. This would not the old king bestow until the prince had promised three things; one was that he should become as his own son and live in the castle; the second was that he should prove his manhood by some knightly deed; the third one—what was the third, Aunt Helen?"
"The third was that he should show himself able to support a wife without aid of the treasure in the king's coffers and that he must be a knight par excellence, of good name, stainless reputation, and educated in those things which do make a gentle knight ready to hold his own in kings' courts."
"Lovely," said Nan; then after a pause, "I hope the prince will not come too soon for the sake of our dear old St. Nick. Aunt Helen, I wonder if the next year will be as full as this. If it is and exciting things pile up this way year after year, I shall not be able to stand it at all by the time I am thirty or forty."
"Don't give yourself any uneasiness," replied Miss Helen; "the quiet days will come and you will be glad that memory holds so much in store for you to live on in days of famine."
Nan nodded. She and her Aunt Helen often had this sort of talk and it was dear to Nan's heart. "What shall I do without you next winter?" she sighed. "That will be a time of famine, for I shall be starving for you and mother."
"You will have new influences, my dear, that will fill your life and give you new inspiration. The bees do not feed on one kind of flower alone, and so must you, my honey, and my honey-seeker, stick your proboscis into every flower you find. You must seek your sweets all along the way of life."
"You're my sweet," said Nan, kissing her; "you and mother are my very sweetest sweets. Now I must go, for I hear the clock striking that tells me to get ready for dinner, our last dinner here, Aunt Helen."
And the last breakfast was the next morning when all appeared in traveling dress, for before the morning was over they had turned their backs upon the Sunset Land and were facing the east where the hopes of youth were still rising for them.