"Come!" he said more roughly yet, "why don't you speak when you are spoken to? Do you know who I am?"
The aged crone wrinkled her forehead and lifted her grizzled eyebrows, still without looking at him.
"No," she answered coolly, "I don't know that I do. You look like a boot-black with that box on your shoulders, only that a boot-black would be more civil-spoken."
An angry retort sprang to the lips of the Prince, but before he could give vent to it a terrible little shrill sound from the box struck his ears. In sudden dismay he unslung the baby-house, and opened it to discover what was the matter with his family.
In the middle of the floor of the largest room of the baby-house were all the Court, gathered about the old King, who had fallen in a faint from hunger.
"He is starved!" cried the Queen, in a piercing wee voice of anguish.
"I am starving myself!" roared the Lord Chamberlain, in a keen though tiny roar.
"We are all starving!" shrieked the whole Court, in voices more or less audible.
"Well," Vance said, looking at the affliction of the little people, "I must say this is extremely disagreeable of them all to be starving. They always are starving."
"Very," the old woman echoed, with a sneering chuckle.