Once on a Time Part 19

"Yes, your Royal Highness. Except Woggs and me didn't quite know about sardines."

The Princess laughed happily.

"I think there will be enough there for him. It all looks very nice."

She turned round and discovered behind her the last person she wanted to see just then.

The-last-person-she-wanted-to-see-just-then curtsied effectively.

"Forgive me, your Royal Highness," she said profusely, "but I thought I had left Charlotte Patacake's priceless ma.n.u.script up here. No; evidently I was mistaken, your Royal Highness. I will withdraw, your Royal Highness, as I know your Royal Highness would naturally wish to receive his Royal Highness alone."

Listening to this speech one is impressed with Woggs' method of calling everybody "Mum."

"Not at all, Countess," said Hyacinth coldly. "We would prefer you to stay and help us receive his Royal Highness. He is a little late, I think."

Belvane looked unspeakably distressed.

"Oh, I do _hope_ that nothing has happened to him on the way," she exclaimed. "I've an uneasy feeling that something may have occurred."

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Princess Hyacinth gave a shriek and faltered slowly backwards_]

"What could have happened to him?" asked Hyacinth, not apparently very much alarmed.

"Oh, your Royal Highness, it's just a sort of silly feeling of mine.

There may be nothing in it."

There was a noise of footsteps from below; a man's voice was heard.

The Princess and the Countess, both extremely nervous, but from entirely different reasons, arranged suitable smiles of greeting upon their faces; Wiggs and Woggs stood in att.i.tudes of appropriate meekness by the table. The Court Painter could have made a beautiful picture of it.

"His Royal Highness Prince Udo of Araby," announced the voice of an attendant.

"A nervous moment," said Belvane to herself. "Can the ring have failed to act?"

Udo trotted in.

"It hasn't," said Belvane.

Princess Hyacinth gave a shriek, and faltered slowly backwards; Wiggs, who was familiar with these little accidents in the books which she dusted, and Woggs, who had a natural love for any kind of animal, stood their ground.

"Whatever is it?" murmured Hyacinth.

It was as well that Belvane was there.

"Allow me to present to your Royal Highness," she said, stepping forward, "his Royal Highness Prince Udo of Araby."

"Prince _Udo?_" said Hyacinth, all unwilling to believe it.

"I'm afraid so," said Udo gloomily. He had thought over this meeting a good deal in the last two or three days, and he realised now that he had underestimated the difficulties of it.

Hyacinth remembered that she was a Princess and a woman.

"I'm delighted to welcome your Royal Highness to Euralia," she said.

"Won't you sit down--I mean up--er, down." (How _did_ rabbits sit?

Or whatever he was?)

Udo decided to sit up.

"Thank you. You've no idea how difficult it is to talk on four legs to somebody higher up. It strains the neck so."

There was an awkward silence. n.o.body quite knew what to say.

Except Belvane.

She turned to Udo with her most charming smile. "Did you have a pleasant journey?" she asked sweetly.

"No," said Udo coldly.

"Oh, do tell us what happened to you?" cried Hyacinth. "Did you meet some terrible enchanter on the way? Oh, I am so dreadfully sorry."

When one is not feeling very well there is a certain type of question which is always annoying.

"Can't you _see_ what's happened to me?" said Udo crossly. "I don't know _how_ it happened. I had come two days' journey from Araby, when----"

"Please, your Royal Highness," said Wiggs, "is this _your_ tail in the salt?" She took it out, gave it a shake, and handed it back to him.

"Oh, thank you, thank you--two days' journey from Araby when I woke up one afternoon and found myself like this. I ask you to imagine my annoyance. My first thought naturally was to return home and hide myself; but I told myself, Princess, that _you_ wanted me."

The Princess could not help being touched by this, said as it was with a graceful movement of the ears and a caressing of the right whisker, but she wondered a little what she would do with him now that she had got him.

"Er--what _are_ you?" put in Belvane kindly, knowing how men are always glad to talk about themselves.

Udo had caught sight of a well-covered table, and was looking at it with a curious mixture of hope and resignation.

"Very, very hungry," he said, speaking with the air of one who knows.

The Princess, whose mind had been travelling, woke up suddenly.

"Oh, I was forgetting my manners," she said with a smile for which the greediest would have forgiven her. "Let us sit down and refresh ourselves. May I present to your Royal Highness the Countess Belvane."

"Do I shake hands or pat him?" murmured that mistress of Court etiquette, for once at a loss.

Udo placed a paw over his heart and bowed profoundly.

"Charmed," he said gallantly, and coming from a cross between a lion, a rabbit, and a woolly lamb the merest suggestion of gallantry has a most pleasing effect.

They grouped themselves round the repast.

"A little sherbet, your Royal Highness?" said Hyacinth, who presided over the bowl.