“Thank you very much,” said Jan, “I prefer a plain slate or a blackboard, and I always use my own pencil.”
“Prefer, indeed,” said the King, with a great black frown. “What business have you to prefer anything? Slates and blackboards! I’d have you know that this is the King’s Palace and not a village schoolhouse. If a gold pencil and ivory tablets are not good enough for you, you can go and do your sums on the dungeon walls.”
Jan was very frightened. He didn’t at all like the idea of a dungeon, so there was nothing for it but to brave it out as best he might.
One of the lords-in-waiting was bidden to write down the sums, and poor miserable Jan wildly scribbled down the answers as fast as he could, with the eyes of the King, the Queen and of their two lovely daughters and all the lords- and ladies-in-waiting riveted upon him.
But as it happened, the only person at the Court who was any good at arithmetic was the Lord Chamberlain, and he, as you know, was in bed with a cold. It is much easier to put down sums than to work them out, and not one member of the Royal Family had the faintest idea as to whether Jan’s answers were right or wrong.
The King looked as wise as he could. “Very good, very good,” he kept saying. The Princesses clapped their hands. They had never been able to get their sums right; but after all, what does it matter whether a princess can do arithmetic or not?
If one or two of the Court ladies and gentlemen had a suspicion that the figures were not quite correct they daren’t suggest such a thing. If the King said the answers were right it was as much as their lives were worth to say they were wrong. But of course Jan knew nothing of all this. He wrote on and on, and all the time only one thought was in his mind.
“How wonderful, how wonderful!” he kept saying to himself. “I have grown so clever that I can do the sums by myself. I shall never need to bother again about the stupid old pencil and chalk. I really am the cleverest boy in the whole kingdom.”
He did not stay very long at the palace, and he was a little disappointed to find that no one offered him a post at Court and that he was not even presented with a bag of gold pieces.
Every one thanked him politely and he was given a good tea in the housekeeper’s room, and the King and Queen shook hands with him and gave him a pretty silver brooch to wear in his cap, while the Princesses smiled pleasantly and wished him a good journey.