“Is it a castle you live in, darlin’?”
“It’ll be a castle once you’re in it. Who ever heard of a Princess that didn’t live in a castle?”
“Is it terrible big and black and grand, like you?”
“Terrible—you couldn’t tell us apart.”
“Do your great sons live there all by themselves?”
“Oh, rather not. They live there with two tutors and a trainer and an old nurse and four aunts, besides all the hounds and horses and grooms and jockeys and farriers that they can wedge into the stables.”
“The Saints keep us!” invoked Biddy with heartfelt piety. “Was it four aunts you said?”
“Oh, God forgive me, I clean forgot ’em!” The duke’s cry was quite as heartfelt, but it lacked piety. “No, I swear that’s the truth. I sent a messenger down this morning with a letter for Noll, but not one of the lot of them entered my head—Biddy, Biddy, if I’d remembered, I’d have taken you somewhere else.”
“Ah, well, it can’t be helped, darlin’. It’s glad news and golden that I’ve driven the thought of four grand ladies clear out of your head, and it’s small fault of yours that so much as a whisper of the word aunt makes the soles of my feet grow cold and the hairs of my head rise up on end. If you’d known my father’s sister Dasheen you’d never wonder! Maybe the four of these are nice old bodies?”
“And maybe they’re not!” remarked the duke. “Gad, but I’d give a thousand pound to have them hear you calling them nice old bodies. Clarissa, now——”