"It does not please me," said the King with a sigh. "He ought to be far more forward than he is. Is there not something wrong about him?"
"Oh, no," said the King's brother, exchanging meaning looks with the nurse. "Nothing to make your Majesty at all uneasy. No doubt his Royal Highness will outgrow it in time."
"Out-grow what?"
"A slight delicacy—ahem!—in the spine—something inherited, perhaps, from his dear mother."
"Ah, she was always delicate; but she was the sweetest woman that ever lived. Come here, my little son."
The Prince turned to his father a small, sweet, grave face—like his mother's, and the King smiled and held out his arms. But when the boy came to him, not running like a boy, but wriggling awkwardly along the floor, the royal countenance clouded.
"I ought to have been told of this. Send for all the doctors in my kingdom immediately."
They came, and agreed in what had been pretty well known before; that the prince must have been hurt when he was an infant. Did anybody remember?
No, nobody. Indignantly, all the nurses denied that any such accident had happened.
But of all this the King knew nothing, for, indeed, after the first shock of finding out that his son could not walk, and seemed never likely to walk, he interfered very little concerning him. He could not walk; his limbs were mere useless additions to his body, but the body itself was strong and sound, and his face was the same as ever—just like his mother's face, one of the sweetest in the world!