“You will come and see me soon, won’t you Helen?” said the Prince, his lips trembling. “Come very soon {160} Helen, because I want a little girl to play with and to go with me on journeys; and O, Helen, now I have a mamma of my own, and perhaps she will read us stories.”
“Yes, indeed, I will read stories to you,” said the Queen, turning from talking earnestly with Helen’s mamma, who had come to say goodbye to the Prince, “and Helen is coming to see us very, very soon.”
Then the goodbys were all said, and amidst the cheering of the townspeople who were lining the streets outside the toyshop, the King and Queen, accompanied by the Royal House Guards, bore the Prince away to his new home in the Castle among the hills.
That evening when Helen had been tucked snugly in her little bed, she said: “Mamma, how did Prince Arthur get lost; did somebody steal him away from his home?”
“Yes, dear,” said Helen’s mamma. Then she snuggled down on the bed and hugging Helen close, told her how, a while ago, the young Prince had been stolen away by the ruffians and left in the forest where he was found by the good wood chopper.
“Was the Prince ill when he was found?” asked Helen.
“Yes, dear,” answered her mamma, “the Prince was so ill that, when the fever left him, it took away his memory, and he did not know that he was a King’s son.”
“Did the wood chopper know that the little boy he found was a Prince, mamma?”
“No,” said her mamma; “the wicked men had dressed the Prince in ragged clothes when they left him in the forest to starve, and he did not look at all like a Prince.”
“How did the King ever find the Prince?” asked Helen. “Did he go to the wood chopper’s house, mamma?” {161}