“I can’t leave you!” he said. “How can I leave you?”
“People always leave people,” said the princess, with superiority. “Play that’s one of the things I teached you.”
At this Hazen suddenly dropped on one knee—the kings, his fathers, did that for him too—and kissed the princess’s little hand. And as suddenly she wished very much that she had something to give him.
“Here,” she said, “here’s my picture-book. Take it with you and learn it through. Now good-bye.”
And Hazen had just time to slip in the alcove when all the n. g.’s, c.’s, f. p.’s, and l.’s, whom there wasn’t time to spell out, as well as all those whose names are now dust, burst in the room.
“I was just coming,” said the princess, and went.
Hazen dressed himself in the foot-page’s livery and fastened the wallet at one side and the little silver horn at the other, and put on the cap with a plume; and he stole into the king’s garden, with the picture-book of the princess fast in his hand.
He had not been in a garden since he had left his father’s garden, which he could just remember, and to be outdoors now seemed as wonderful as bathing in the ocean, or standing on a high mountain, or seeing the dawn. He hastened along between the flowering shrubs and hollyhocks; he heard the fountains plashing and the song-sparrows singing and the village bells faintly sounding; he saw the goldfish and the water-lilies gleam in the pool and the horses cantering about the paddock. And all at once it seemed that the day was his, to do with what he would, and he felt as if already that were a kind of fortune in his hand. So he hurried round the east wing of the palace and looked up eagerly toward the princess’s window. And there stood the Princess Vista, watching, with her hair partly brushed.
When she saw him, she leaned far out.
“I told you not to look,” she said. “Somebody will see you going.”