"Yes, yes," said deaf Robert; "but what else?"
It had never struck the minstrel that there need be anything else, and he hesitated a little. "Well," he said at last, "can you not hear the sounds of the forest?"
Deaf Robert looked up at the pine-trees overhead and down to the flowers at his feet. "I used to be able to," he said sadly, "but even the forest has grown silent now." Then he clenched his fists and looked imploringly at his father. "Must I live to the end of my days without hearing any of the things that other boys hear?" he cried.
"You are a little unreasonable, my son," said the minstrel. "Are not the beautiful sounds of life enough for you?"
"Enough?" said deaf Robert. "I want much, much more than that, father. Why, I want to hear the Princess cry!"
"That is nonsense!" exclaimed the minstrel. "Tears make a most unpleasant sound, and you would be extremely disappointed if you were to hear the Princess cry."
The minstrel's son drew himself up proudly. "You do not understand; you are not real either," he said. "The tears of my Princess make the sweetest sound in the world, and I am not going to rest until I learn how to hear it." Then he turned and walked through the gate and out into the forest once more.
The minstrel looked after him and sighed. "It was the best gift I could think of," he murmured; "it was the one I would have chosen for myself. It is true," he added thoughtfully, "that I never wanted to play with a King's daughter."
The minstrel's son wandered aimlessly through the forest,—the forest that he had once liked so well because it was all his, and that he only liked now because he had found his little Princess in it; and there he might have been wandering still, if he had not suddenly met a wymp. This was not really surprising in that particular forest, for it was just the kind of forest in which any boy of fourteen might at any minute meet a wymp; but for all that, deaf Robert was just a little bit startled when the wymp suddenly dropped in his path from the tree above and nodded at him.
"Hullo!" said the wymp. "What is the matter with you?"