At the end of the interrogation Erebus heaved a great sigh, and said with heart-felt conviction:
“Well, thank goodness, I’m not a princess! It must be perfectly awful!”
“It must be nearly as bad to be a prince,” said the Terror in the gloomy tone of one who has lost a dear illusion.
The princess could not believe her ears; she stared at the Twins with parted lips and amazed incredulous eyes. Their words had given her the shock of her short lifetime. As far as memory carried her back, she had been assured, frequently and solemnly, that to be a princess, a German princess, a Hohenzollern princess, was the most glorious and delightful lot a female human being could enjoy, only a little less glorious and delightful than the lot of a German prince.
“B-b-but it’s sp-p-plendid to be a princess! Everybody says so!” she stammered.
“They were humbugging you. You’ve just made it quite clear that it’s horrid in every kind of way. Why, you can’t do any single thing you want to. There’s always somebody messing about you to see that you don’t,” said Erebus with cold decision.
“B-b-but one is a p-p-princess,” stammered the princess, with something of the wild look of one beneath whose feet the firm earth has suddenly given way.
The Terror perceived her distress; and he set about soothing it.
“You’re forgetting the food,” he said quickly to Erebus. “I don’t suppose she ever has to eat cold mutton; and I expect she can have all the sweets and ices she wants.”
“Of course,” said the princess; and then she went on quickly: “B-b-but it isn’t what you have to eat that makes it so—so—so important being a princess. It’s—”