"Tse! Tse! Tse!" It was a sympathetic cluck. "Was she a wicked princess?" The query was gently put, but it deeply affected the man. He tried to smile, failed, then like a forlorn little boy he came and bowed his head beneath her hand.
"I knew you'd understand, Mother Briskow, so I—I ran to you with my hurt, just as I used to run to my Mother Gray." After a while he continued in a smothered voice: "She isn't a wicked princess. She didn't mean to hurt me and—that's what makes it hurt so deep. She tumbled the old duke's castle down upon his head; tumbled the old duke out of his dreams. He isn't a duke any longer."
"He'll allus be a duke," Mrs. Briskow firmly declared. "He was born that way."
"At any rate, he's a sad old duke now; all his conceit is gone. You see, he was a vain old gentleman, and his courtiers used to tell him he was splendid, handsome—They said he looked as handsome as a king, and by and by he began to think he must be a king. His enemies sneered at this and said he was neither duke nor king, but a—a mountebank. That made him furious, so he went to war with them, and, by Jove, he fought pretty well for an old fellow! Anyhow, he licked 'em. When they fell down and begged for mercy he knew he was indeed a great person—greater even than he had suspected and worthy of any princess in the land."
"Pshaw! Ain't a duke higher than a princess?"
"No, Ma. Not higher than this princess. Her father made all the laws. She is very noble and very good. Good princesses are scarce and—and so, of course, they're very high. But the Duke of Dallas didn't stop to think of that. He told himself that he was so strong and so rich and so desirable that she would be flattered at his notice. He got all dressed up and went to call on her, and, on the way, whenever he looked into a shop window, he didn't see the buns and the candies and the dolls inside; all he saw was his own reflection. It looked so magnificent that he strutted higher and thought how proud he was going to make her.
"I guess that was the trouble with the old duke all along; he had never looked deeply enough to see what was inside. Anyhow, what do you think, Ma? While he'd been off at war conquering people and making them acknowledge that he was a king, the little princess had fallen in love with—with his nephew. Nice boy, that nephew, and the duke thought a lot of him."
Ma Briskow's hand, which had been slowly stroking Gray's bent head, ceased its movement; she drew a sharp breath.
"There happened to be an old mirror in the princess's boudoir, and while the duke was waiting for her he saw himself in it. He saw himself just as he was, not as he had looked in the shop windows, for it was a truthful mirror and it told everything. My! That was a bad moment for the Duke of Dallas, when he saw that he wasn't young and beautiful, but old and wrinkled and—funny. That was bad enough, but when he looked again and saw the princess whom he loved in the arms of his handsome nephew, why, he gave up. All his fine garments fell off and he realized with shame that, after all, he was only the withered mountebank.
"When he got home his castle had collapsed. There wasn't a stone standing, so he ran away—ran to his mother."