"I don't care a bit," he said; "I wouldn't have silly long legs like yours for anything. It's much better to know things; and only think of all the things I know that you never heard of! You couldn't even say the exports and imports of Fairyland without looking in the book first; now, could you?"
"Hush!" said his Queen-mother, who was also drinking tea on the lawn. "That is not the way to speak to a little lady."
The Lady Daffodilia stooped a little, and smoothed out the creases in her black silk stockings, just to show that she had not forgotten how much longer her legs were than the Prince's. The Prince pretended not to see.
"What you say is very true," then said Daffodilia, who was always fair, even when she was most aggravating; "but I am better off than you, all the same. I can go and look in the book if I want to know all those tiresome stuffy things you think such a lot about; but all the books in the world won't make you so tall as I am!"
The Prince was much annoyed, for there was no doubt that the Lady Daffodilia had the best of the argument. He aimed a most unprincely kick at a harmless geranium plant, that, like the Lady Daffodilia, had never done anything in its life but grow; and he turned very red in the face.
"You're only a girl," he said; "and girls think too much of themselves. That's what my Professor says!"
"If you were a girl," laughed the Lady Daffodilia, "it would not matter about your being such a little bit of a thing! Is it not very unpleasant to be so short, when you are a boy?"
The Prince turned and walked quickly towards the garden gate. It was true that he was a prince, and could not therefore be rude to the Lady Daffodilia; but he was a boy, too, and if he had stopped another minute he was quite certain he would have lifted her down from the wall and given her a good shaking.
"Where are you going?" she cried after him, and laughed more than ever when she saw how cross she had made him.