"This last answer quite discomfited his majesty, who turned on his heel, and betook himself to his counting-house again. But he was not halfway towards it, when the voice of his queen overtook him:
"'And it's a bad thing to be light-haired,' screamed she, determined to have more last words, now that her spirit was roused.
"The queen's hair was black as night; and the king's had been, and his daughter's was, golden as morning. But it was not this reflection on his hair that troubled him; it was the double use of the word light. For the king hated all witticisms, and punning especially. And besides he could not tell whether the queen meant light-haired or light-heired; for why might she not aspirate her vowels when she was ex-asperated herself?"
"Now, really," interrupted the clergyman, "I must protest. Mr. Smith, you bury us under an avalanche of puns, and, I must say, not very good ones. Now, the story, though humorous, is not of the kind to admit of such fanciful embellishment. It reminds one rather of a burlesque at a theatre—the lowest thing, from a literary point of view, to be found."
"I submit," was all I could answer; for I feared that he was right. The passage, as it now stands, is not nearly so bad as it was then, though, I confess, it is still bad enough.
"I think," said Mrs. Armstrong, "since criticism is the order of the evening, and Mr. Smith is so kind as not to mind it, that he makes the king and queen too silly. It takes away from the reality."
"Right too, my dear madam," I answered.
"The reality of a fairy-tale?" said Mrs. Cathcart, as if asking a question of herself.
"But will you grant me the justice," said I, "to temper your judgments of me, if not of my story, by remembering that this is the first thing of the sort I ever attempted?"
"I tell you what," said the doctor, "it's very easy to criticise, but none of you could have written it yourselves."