"You forget," said Mr. Jack. "She was the Princess."
"Huh!" grunted Jill and David in unison.
"The boy remembered it then," went on Mr. Jack, after a pause,—"about the money, and that she was a Princess. And of course he knew—when he thought of it—that he could not expect that a Princess would wave like a girl—just a girl. Besides, very likely she did not care particularly about seeing him. Princesses did forget, he fancied,—they had so much, so very much to fill their lives. It was this thought that kept him from going to see her—this, and the recollection that, after all, if she really HAD wanted to see him, she could have waved.
"There came a day, however, when another youth, who did not dare to go alone, persuaded him, and together they paid her a call. The boy understood, then, many things. He found the Princess; there was no sign of the girl. The Princess was tall and dignified, with a cold little hand and a smooth, sweet voice. There was no frank smile in her eyes, neither were there any mischievous crinkles about her nose and lips. There was no mention of towers or flags; no reference to wavings or to childhood's days. There was only a stiffly polite little conversation about colleges and travels, with a word or two about books and plays. Then the callers went home. On the way the boy smiled scornfully to himself. He was trying to picture the beauteous vision he had seen, this unapproachable Princess in her filmy lace gown,—standing in the tower window and waving—waving to a bit of a house on the opposite hill. As if that could happen!
"The boy, during those last three years, had known only books. He knew little of girls—only one girl—and he knew still less of Princesses. So when, three days after the call, there came a chance to join a summer camp with a man who loved books even better than did the boy himself, he went gladly. Once he had refused to go on this very trip; but then there had been the girl. Now there was only the Princess—and the Princess didn't count."
"Like the hours that aren't sunshiny," interpreted David.
"Yes," corroborated Mr. Jack. "Like the hours when the sun does n't shine."
"And then?" prompted Jill.
"Well, then,—there wasn't much worth telling," rejoined Mr. Jack gloomily. "Two more years passed, and the Princess grew to be twenty-one. She came into full control of her property then, and after a while she came back to the old stone house with the towers and turned it into a fairyland of beauty. She spent money like water. All manner of artists, from the man who painted her ceilings to the man who planted her seeds, came and bowed to her will. From the four corners of the earth she brought her treasures and lavished them through the house and grounds. Then, every summer, she came herself, and lived among them, a very Princess indeed."
"And the boy?—what became of the boy?" demanded David. "Didn't he see her—ever?"