"Hm-m; well," he said, "I might, I suppose, tell you a story about a PRINCESS and—a Pauper. I—know one well enough."
"Good!—then tell it," cried both Jill and David. And Mr. Jack began his story.
"She was not always a Princess, and he was not always a Pauper,—and that's where the story came in, I suppose," sighed the man. "She was just a girl, once, and he was a boy; and they played together and—liked each other. He lived in a little house on a hill."
"Like this?" demanded Jill.
"Eh? Oh—er—yes, SOMETHING like this," returned Mr. Jack, with an odd half-smile. "And she lived in another bit of a house in a town far away from the boy."
"Then how could they play together?" questioned David.
"They couldn't, ALWAYS. It was only summers when she came to visit in the boy's town. She was very near him then, for the old aunt whom she visited lived in a big stone house with towers, on another hill, in plain sight from the boy's home."
"Towers like those—where the Lady of the Roses lives?" asked David.
"Eh? What? Oh—er—yes," murmured Mr. Jack. "We'll say the towers were something like those over there." He paused, then went on musingly: "The girl used to signal, sometimes, from one of the tower windows. One wave of the handkerchief meant, 'I'm coming, over'; two waves, with a little pause between, meant, 'You are to come over here.' So the boy used to wait always, after that first wave to see if another followed; so that he might know whether he were to be host or guest that day. The waves always came at eight o'clock in the morning, and very eagerly the boy used to watch for them all through the summer when the girl was there."
"Did they always come, every morning?" Asked Jill.