Part 29

'So do I,' said the Princess earnestly. And instantly it was. I suppose the Princess wished it very hard, for there was the hedge-pig with its long spiky body and its little pointed face, its bright eyes, its small round ears, and its sharp, turned-up nose.

It looked at the Princess but it did not speak.

'Say something now,' said Queen Eliza. 'I should like to see a hedge-pig speak.'

'The truth is, if speak I must, I must speak the truth,' said Erinaceus. 'The Princess has thrown away her life-wish to make me visible. I wish she had wished instead for something nice for herself.'

'Oh, was that my life-wish?' cried the Princess. 'I didn't know, dear Hedge-pig, I didn't know. If I'd only known, I would have wished you back into your proper shape.'

'If you had,' said the hedge-pig, 'it would have been the shape of a dead man. Remember that I have a thousand spears in my back, and no man can carry those and live.'

The Princess burst into tears.

'Oh, you can't go on being a hedge-pig for ever,' she said, 'it's not fair. I can't bear it. Oh Mamma! Oh Papa! Oh Benevola!'

And there stood Benevola before them, a little dazzling figure with blue butterfly's wings and a wreath of moonshine.

'Well?' she said, 'well?'

'Oh, you know,' said the Princess, still crying. 'I've thrown away my life-wish, and he's still a hedge-pig. Can't you do anything!'

'I can't,' said the Fairy, 'but you can. Your kisses are magic kisses. Don't you remember how you cured the King and Queen of all the wounds the hedge-pig made by rolling itself on to their faces in the night?'

'But she can't go kissing hedge-pigs,' said the Queen, 'it would be most unsuitable. Besides it would hurt her.'

But the hedge-pig raised its little pointed face, and the Princess took it up in her hands. She had long since learned how to do this without hurting either herself or it. She looked in its little bright eyes.

'I would kiss you on every one of your thousand spears,' she said, 'to give you what you wish.'

'Kiss me once,' it said, 'where my fur is soft. That is all I wish, and enough to live and die for.'

She stooped her head and kissed it on its forehead where the fur is soft, just where the prickles begin.

And instantly she was standing with her hands on a young man's shoulders and her lips on a young man's face just where the hair begins and the forehead leaves off. And all round his feet lay a pile of fallen arrows.

She drew back and looked at him.

'Erinaceus,' she said, 'you're different--from the baker's boy I mean.'

'When I was an invisible hedge-pig,' he said, 'I knew everything. Now I have forgotten all that wisdom save only two things. One is that I am a king's son. I was stolen away in infancy by an unprincipled baker, and I am really the son of that usurping King whose face I rolled on in the night. It is a painful thing to roll on your father's face when you are all spiky, but I did it, Princess, for your sake, and for my father's too. And now I will go to him and tell him all, and ask his forgiveness.'

'You won't go away?' said the Princess. 'Ah! don't go away. What shall I do without my hedge-pig?'

Erinaceus stood still, looking very handsome and like a prince.

'What is the other thing that you remember of your hedge-pig wisdom?' asked the Queen curiously. And Erinaceus answered, not to her but to the Princess:

'The other thing, Princess, is that I love you.'

'Isn't there a third thing, Erinaceus?' said the Princess, looking down.

'There is, but you must speak that, not I.'

'Oh,' said the Princess, a little disappointed, 'then you knew that I loved you?'