CHAPTER V.
LITTLE PRINCE DEL PARADISO.
HAT day the botany class found their teacher in a flutter of excitement. There was a fresh, pink glow in the faded cheeks, and an unusual sparkle in the kindly eyes. She seated herself in the episcopal chair, lifted her lorgnette, and began to arrange the specimens for the day's lesson, but her hand trembled so that she could scarcely adjust the microscope, and the papers on which her notes were written sifted through her fingers and were strewn in confusion on the floor.
"Are you ill, Miss Prillwitz?" Adelaide asked, in alarm.
"No, Miss Armstrong," replied the princess, "it is not a painful in my system, and it is not a sorry; it is a pleasant. I shall expect to myself a company, and this is to me so seldom that I find myself égaré—what you call it?—scatter? sprinkled?—as to my understanding."
We all looked our interest, and Winnie ventured to ask—"One of your relations, Miss Prillwitz?"
"Yes," replied the little lady; "he is of my own family, though to see him I have never ze pleasure. It ees ze little Prince del Paradiso."
We girls pinched each other under the table, while Milly murmured, "A prince! How perfectly lovely!"