THE PRINCESS.
"This is really insupportable," said Adela, walking, in a hurried manner, from the window overlooking the court, to the terrace which led into the garden.
"What is the matter?" said her mother, who entered at the moment and overheard her.
"Why, you see, mamma," replied Adela, a little confused, "it is past ten o'clock,—(it was five minutes over the hour,)—and papa is not returned from hunting. We shall never get our breakfast."
"Do you think so? that would be very unfortunate, certainly."
"But papa said he would be back by ten o'clock."
"Certainly, five minutes longer are too much to be endured."
"Mamma! I am hungry."
"Well, my dear, you are not obliged to wait for our breakfast; the bread is upon the table, you can take as much as you please; it is surely better to breakfast upon dry bread than bear any longer what is insupportable."
Adela made no reply; for she must have confessed that although she was hungry enough to complain, she was not hungry enough to breakfast on dry bread, which would have been a proof that she was complaining about a mere trifle. This was Adela's chief defect. The least disappointment appeared to her, to use her habitual expression, insupportable. For the slightest indisposition or hurt, she would lament, disturb everybody, and require to be pitied,—not that she so much feared pain, but that whatever incommoded or put her the least out of her way, seemed to her the most grievous and extraordinary thing possible. She must be attended to at the very moment appointed, even things that did not depend on any one must fall out precisely as she desired, or all was wrong. Her nurse used to laugh at her, and say that it was very wrong of the rain to come on the day she wished to go out; for it seemed, in fact, as if every thing must happen so as to suit her convenience and fancy; nor did she seem able to bear the consequences even of what she had most desired, as soon as they occasioned her the slightest inconvenience. Thus, for example, she would take a long walk, and as soon as she began to feel fatigued, she would complain as if others were in fault. She would repeat fifty times over, "This tiresome château will never come," for she seemed almost to believe that the château ought to come to her. She considered herself much aggrieved when her mother would not permit her to hang on her arm, or lean on her sister's shoulder; for her only concern was for herself. Thus she could not conceive why they should do without the carriage when the horses were engaged in helping to bring home the hay; or why her nurse was not ready to dress her, when she had been sent out on a message to the village. Her little sister Amelia would sometimes say, "Adela is always sure of having some one to love her, for she loves herself so well."