“Spoilt boy!” she exclaimed with indignation, “and how comes he to be spoilt? Yes,” she continued with increasing vehemence, “who has spoilt him? What is it that makes everybody dislike him? What makes him a plague and a torment to himself and everybody else? Why is he impatient, and greedy, and wilful, and ill-tempered, and selfish? Is it not because Queen Ninnilinda encourages him in all these vices, and because King Katzekopf, though he knows that everything is going wrong, is too lazy and indolent to interfere and set them right? You are neither of you fit to be trusted with your own child. You are doing all you can to make him wicked and miserable, a bad man, and a bad king.”
“I’m sure there’s not a child in the kingdom that has such pains taken with him,” replied the Queen angrily. “He has instructors in all the different branches of useful knowledge, and if he is a little mischievous, or self-willed at times, are not all children so?”
“Niece, niece,” replied the Fairy, “you speak like a fool. What good is there in knowledge, unless a right use be made of it? And how is he likely to make a right use of it, if he be mischievous and self-willed? And how can you expect him to be otherwise than mischievous and self-willed, if you encourage, instead of checking, his propensities that way?”
“I’m sure I cannot check his propensities,” retorted Ninnilinda in a huff.
“I never thought you could,” said Lady Abracadabra quietly, “for you have not yet learned to control your own temper.”
The Queen coloured and bit her lip.
“I wish, kinswoman,” said the King in a conciliating tone, “since you thought the Prince was being so ill brought up, that you would have told us so a little sooner?”
“And where would have been the good of that? You know very well that you would not have listened to me. Nay, I don’t believe that you will listen to me now. No, no, when I promised to befriend your child, I ought to have taken the matter into my own hands at once, and carried him off to Fairy-land, and superintended his education there.”
When the Queen heard these words, she trembled from head to foot, and threw herself on her knees before her aunt, exclaiming—“Nay, Lady Abracadabra, anything but that! anything but that! I know your power, but oh! as you are powerful, be merciful likewise, and do not take my child from me!”
The Fairy saw that Queen Ninnilinda was now in a disposition to submit to any conditions which might be imposed upon her, and therefore she answered her kindly: