"Honest! She lives in that funny old house across the square, that Winnie always pretends to think is haunted. We are to parade over there three days in the week. Madame says it's a great opportunity, for she is really quite eminent; writes for scientific journals, has traveled in all sorts of foreign countries, and has moved in court circles."
"I told you so!" exclaimed Adelaide, triumphantly. "I always said she was a true-blue princess."
"I don't know that you have quite proved it yet," replied Emma Jane Anton, coolly, "but Madame did say that we would have an opportunity of learning much more from her than mere botany—etiquette, I presume—for she went on to hint that she had been brought up in a different school of manners from that of our own day and country, that we would find her peculiar in some ways, and that she trusted to our native courtesy to humor her little foibles, and a hundred more things of the same sort, winding up with that stock expression which she always uses when she has talked a subject to shreds and tatters—'A word to the wise is sufficient.'"
"I wish I had heard her," said Witch Winnie; "I don't consider this subject talked to tatters, by any means. I propose that this Botany class constitute itself a committee of investigation to clear up the mystery in regard to the history of the princess. We are supposed to be devoted to the study of nature, but I consider human nature a deal the more interesting. It will almost pay for having to mind one's p's and q's. I wonder what she would say if she caught me sliding down her palace balusters! We'll all have to practice curtseying—one step to the side, then two back. Oh! I'm ever so sorry I knocked over that stand. Was the vase a keepsake or anything? I'll buy you another. No, I can't, for I've spent all my allowance for this month. Well, you may have that bonbonnière of mine you liked so much." The vase was a treasure, but no one could be vexed with Witch Winnie, and I forgave her, of course, and would none of the bonbonnière.
Our first glimpse at the house in which the princess lived was as appetizing to our imaginations as the little lady herself. It had been built as a church-school, and straggled around the church, shaping itself to the exterior angles of that edifice, and in so doing gained a number of queerly shaped rooms, some long and narrow, and others with irregular corners, but all bright with southern sunshine. The princess rented only the upper floor and the front room in the basement. The rest of the house had been let to other parties, but was now vacant. How strange and lonely it must seem, we thought, to go up and down those long staircases, and peep into the uninhabited rooms! Rather eerie at night. "I wouldn't live that way for the world," shivered Milly. "I should be afraid of robbers."
"Burglars don't usually choose an unoccupied house for their operations," Emma Jane remarked, sententiously.
Later, when we were better acquainted with the princess, Milly asked her if she was never timid. She acknowledged that she was, but assured us that rats were one great comfort.
"What do you mean?" Milly asked.
"Whenevaire," said the princess (in the quaint broken English which we always found so fascinating, English which had only the foreignness of pronunciation and idiom, and which Adelaide insisted was rarely so maltreated as to be really broken, but was only a little dislocated)—"whenevaire I hear one cautious sawing noise which shall be as if ze burglaire to file ze lock, I say to myself, 'Ah, ha! Monsieur Rat have invited to himself some companie in ze pantry of ze butler.' When zere come one tappage on ze escalier, as zo some one make haste to depart ze house, I turn myself upon my bed and make to myself explanation—Rats! When ze footsteps mysterious steal so softly down ze hall, and make pause justly at my door, then I reach for ze great cane of my fazzer, which I keep at all times by ze canopy of my bed, and I pound on ze floor—boom, boom, Monsieur Rat scélérat, and it is thus I make my reassurance."
The princess received us in what had been the basement dining-room, which she called her laboratory. The entire south side was one broad window of small diamond-shaped panes. Forming a sill to this window was a row of low, wide cases for the reception of herbaria, and the room had a peculiar herby smell, a mixture of sweet-fern and faint aromatic herbs.