‘And hens,’ said the Queen, ‘yes. And now it can never, never be. Look at the child! I just ask you! Look at her!’
‘No,’ said the King firmly, ‘I haven’t done that since she was ten, except on Sundays.’
‘Couldn’t we get a prince to agree to a “Sundays only” marriage—not let him see her during the week?’
‘Such an unusual arrangement,’ said the King, ‘would involve very awkward explanations, and I can’t think of any except the true ones, which would be quite impossible to give. You see, we should want a first-class prince, and no really high-toned Highness would take a wife on those terms.’
[p167]
‘It’s a thoroughly comfortable kingdom,’ said the Queen doubtfully. ‘The young man would be handsomely provided for for life.’
‘I couldn’t marry Belinda to a time-server or a place-worshipper,’ said the King decidedly.
Meanwhile the Princess had taken the matter into her own hands. She had fallen in love.
You know, of course, that a handsome book is sent out every year to all the kings who have daughters to marry. It is rather like the illustrated catalogues of Liberty’s or Peter Robinson’s, only instead of illustrations showing furniture or ladies’ cloaks and dresses, the pictures are all of princes who are of an age to be married, and are looking out for suitable wives. The book is called the ‘Royal Match Catalogue Illustrated,’—and besides the pictures of the princes it has little printed bits about their incomes, accomplishments,
prospects, and tempers, and relations.
Now the Princess saw this book—which is never shown to princesses, but only to their parents—it was carelessly left lying on the round table in the parlour. She looked all through it, and she hated each prince more than the one before till she came to the very end, and on the last page of all, [p168 screwed away in a corner, was the picture of a prince who was quite as good-looking as a prince has any call to be.