“You see, Ricardo,” she said, “I was right after all. There is not much pleasure in sport that is easy and certain. Now, apply this moral to dragon-killing with magic instruments. It may be useful when one is obliged to defend oneself, but surely a prince ought not to give his whole time to nothing else!”
Dick had no answer ready, so he only grumbled:
“You’re always preaching at me, Jack; everybody always is. I seem to have been born just to be preached at.”
Some people are; and it does grow rather tedious in the long run. But perhaps what
Jaqueline said may have made some impression on Ricardo, for he stuck to his books for weeks, and was got into decimal fractions and Euclid.
All this, of course, pleased the king very much, and he began to entertain hopes of Ricardo’s becoming a wise and learned prince, and a credit to his illustrious family.
Things were not always to go smoothly, far from it; and it was poor Jaqueline who fell into trouble next. She had been very ready to lecture Dick, as we saw, and took a good deal of credit to herself for his steadiness. But one day King Prigio happened to meet Jaqueline’s maid, Rosina, on the stairs; and as Rosina was a pretty girl, and the king was always kind to his dependents, he stopped to have a chat with her.
“Why, Rosina, what a pretty little silver cross you are wearing,” he said, and he lifted a
curious ornament which hung from a chain on Rosina’s neck. It consisted of seven drops of silver, set like this:
