King: Do not! He might waken up the Dragon
and put him in mind of the girl, for to make his
own foretelling come true.
Nurse: Ah, such a thing cannot be! The
poor innocent child! (Weeps.)
Queen: Where's the use of crying and roaring?
The thing must be stopped and put an end to.
I don't say I give in to your story, but that would
be an unnatural death. I would be scandalised
being stepmother to a girl that would be swallowed
by a sea-serpent!
Nurse: Ochone! Don't be talking of it at
all!
Queen: At the King of Alban's Court, one
of the royal family to die over, it will be naturally
on a pillow, and the dead-bells ringing, and a
burying with white candles, and crape on the
knocker of the door, and a flagstone put over the
grave. What way could we put a stone or so
much as a rose-bush over Nuala and she in the
inside of a water-worm might be ploughing its way
down to the north of the world?
Nurse: Och! that is what is killing me entirely!
O save her, save her.
King: I tell you, it being to be, it will be.
Queen: You may be right, so, when you would
not go to the expense of paying her charges at the
Royal school. But wait, now, there is a plan
coming into my mind.
Nurse: There must surely be some way!
Queen: It is likely a king's daughter the beast—
if there is a beast—will come questioning after, and
not after a king's wife.