We saw a good deal of the little prince. Miss Prillwitz called him Giacomo, and was deeply attached to him. He did her credit too, for he was docile and bright. His mother was right in saying that he inherited his father's facility for mathematics, but with this faculty he possessed also a love for mechanics and for machinery of every sort.
"He will make one good engineer some day," said Miss Prillwitz, in speaking of him to us.
"That is a strange career for a prince," said Adelaide.
"My tear, it may be many year before he ees call to his princedom, and in ze meanstime he muss make his way. Zen, too, ze sons of ze royal houses make such study, and it is one good thing for ze country whose prince interest himself in ze science."
"I wonder how he would like to study surveying by and by," Adelaide said. "I know that father could employ him in the West."
"Zat is one excellent idea," said Miss Prillwitz. "We will see, when ze time s'all arrive."
We were all fond of the little prince. After all, Miss Prillwitz had decided to let him attend the botany lessons on Saturdays. "If he s'all be one surveyor in ze West," she said, "he s'all have opportunity to discover ze new species of flower; he must learn all ze natural science."
The prince attended the public school during the week, and held his place at the head of his class with ease. It was not hard to do so, now that he could sleep all night. Emma Jane, who had had her spasms of doubt in regard to him, and had even gone so far at first as to say that Miss Prillwitz was a crank, and she had no faith in the boy's nobility, had been won over by the boy himself, and remarked one afternoon that the internal evidence was convincing; Giacomo was not like common children; he was evidently cast in a finer mold; he would do honor to any position; birth would tell, after all. It was all that dear Milly could do not to betray the secret to the little prince. He was very fond of Milly, but deferential and unpresuming, as became his apparent position. "Some day our places may be reversed. You may live in a beautiful home and have hosts of friends," Milly said to him. "Will you remember me then, Giacomo?"
"How can that ever be?" the boy asked. "You will grow up and be a fine rich lady; I will be a poor young man whom you will have quite forgotten."
"Not necessarily poor," Milly hastened to reply. "If you go West you may, by working hard, become rich and famous. Will you forget your old friends then?"