"But it does, when we have to end by marrying princes. That's the bother of it."
"Well, I am trying to make it easier for you. Oh, I admit the drawbacks; but why make them out worse than they are?"
Charlotte's moods always softened under her father's cajolery; not that she was more fond of him than of her mother; but these two had more ground for mutual sympathy and understanding; and pity for his vaguely harassed countenance was never far absent from her heart.
"I am having just now," the King went on, "a very trying and disturbing time—in ways that I don't want to talk about. Do try, child, not to add to my anxieties."
Charlotte, feeling compunction working within her, thought hard for a while. "Before he comes——" she said, and stopped. "Papa, when does he come?"
"Not till after the winter session has opened—perhaps about Christmas."
"Well, before he comes, then, I want to go away quite by myself for three weeks or a fortnight, and then—I'll think about it. If, when the time comes, you want me to see him I will, and I promise not to be rude to him. But he shan't think that I have been waiting for him, or that I want to have anything to do with him; I shall make that quite plain."
"Then I do hope that you know what not being rude means," put in the Queen; "for I must say that doesn't sound like it."
"Oh, I will provide a safe margin," replied Charlotte. "He shall have nothing to complain of. If I do see him I will be as nice to him as ever I can; much nicer than you have been to me!"
"Now, my dear, don't begin scuffling again!" said her father deprecatingly. "Very well; that's settled then."