“He was King of the Barbarians,” said the Jailer’s son—and the Princess sighed.
“I thought it might have been my father,” she said, “he was lost at sea, you know.”
The Under-lad nodded sympathetically and went away.
“He doesn’t seem such a bad sort,” said Mavis.
“No,” said the Princess, “I can’t understand it. I thought all the Under Folk were terrible fierce creatures, cruel and implacable.”
“And they don’t seem so very different from us—except to look at,” said Bernard.
“I wonder,” said Mavis, “what the war began about?”
“Oh—we’ve always been enemies,” said the Princess, carelessly.
“Yes—but how did you begin being enemies?”
“Oh, that,” said the Princess, “is lost in the mists of antiquity, before the dawn of history and all that.”