"I would, and then you'll feel better."
"No, I will not, for telling will not do any good. I'm not sure but it will do harm."
"You poor child, what can it be?"
"Just this—Jim is not the prince."
"I don't see how you know that, or, if you do, what business it is of yours."
"Because I deceived Miss Prillwitz, and got Jim in there by making her think he was the boy she had heard about, while the real boy is somewhere else. I've got to tell her before his friends take him away, and before that other boy disappears from view entirely."
"That is really dreadful, but if you know where the true prince is, it can't be quite irreparable. What ever made you do such a thing? and how did you manage to do it?"
"Why, you see, I hadn't any faith in this story of a lost prince at all. I thought that Miss Prillwitz was just a little bit of a crank, who had been imposed on by designing people and I was sure, when I saw the woman at the door who came to tell Miss Prillwitz that her boy had a situation and could not come, that she had been in league with the person who had told Miss Prillwitz about the lost prince, but had backed out of the plot because she was afraid. Miss Prillwitz had evidently not suspected that she knew anything of the boy's supposed expectations, for she had merely promised to take him to board, teach, and clothe, for whatever the mother could give her, the woman having said that she was going into a family as German nursery governess, and agreeing to send a trifle toward her boy's support whenever she received her salary. It was just the time that Mrs. Halsey was looking for a place for Jim. It was so easy to have him come at the time agreed upon and take the place of the other boy. I was afraid, at first, that Miss Prillwitz would be surprised by the regularity of our payments and the amount we sent, but she didn't seem to suspect anything, and she is so fond of him, and he deserves it all—and everything worked so well up to the coming of the prince."
"But, Winnie, why didn't you tell her the whole story at first? I think she would have taken him, all the same, and then you would not have got things into this awful muddle."
"Indeed she would not have taken him, a mere pauper out of the slums, unless she had thought that he was something more. She is a born aristocrat, and she never could have taken Jim to her heart so if she had not believed that he was of her own class—of her family, even. Why, even Adelaide would never have seen half the fine qualities in him which she thinks she has discovered if she had not thought him a noble; and it has thrown a fine halo of romance over him for Milly; and even Emma Jane, who was hard to convince at first, is firmly persuaded that he is made of a little finer clay than the rest of us. And you, Tib, confess that you are disappointed yourself."