Part 40

'It's a thoroughly comfortable kingdom,' said the Queen doubtfully. 'The young man would be handsomely provided for for life.'

'I couldn't marry Belinda to a time-server or a place-worshipper,' said the King decidedly.

Meanwhile the Princess had taken the matter into her own hands. She had fallen in love.

You know, of course, that a handsome book is sent out every year to all the kings who have daughters to marry. It is rather like the illustrated catalogues of Liberty's or Peter Robinson's, only instead of illustrations showing furniture or ladies' cloaks and dresses, the pictures are all of princes who are of an age to be married, and are looking out for suitable wives. The book is called the 'Royal Match Catalogue Illustrated,'--and besides the pictures of the princes it has little printed bits about their incomes, accomplishments, prospects, and tempers, and relations.

Now the Princess saw this book--which is never shown to princesses, but only to their parents--it was carelessly left lying on the round table in the parlour. She looked all through it, and she hated each prince more than the one before till she came to the very end, and on the last page of all, screwed away in a corner, was the picture of a prince who was quite as good-looking as a prince has any call to be.

'I like you,' said Belinda softly. Then she read the little bit of print underneath.

Prince Bellamant, aged twenty-four. Wants Princess who doesn't object to a christening curse. Nature of curse only revealed in the strictest confidence. Good tempered. Comfortably off. Quiet habits. No relations.

'Poor dear,' said the Princess. 'I wonder what the curse is! I'm sure I shouldn't mind!'

The blue dusk of evening was deepening in the garden outside. The Princess rang for the lamp and went to draw the curtain. There was a rustle and a faint high squeak--and something black flopped on to the floor and fluttered there.

'Oh--it's a bat,' cried the Princess, as the lamp came in. 'I don't like bats.'

'Let me fetch a dust-pan and brush and sweep the nasty thing away,' said the parlourmaid.

'No, no,' said Belinda, 'it's hurt, poor dear,' and though she hated bats she picked it up. It was horribly cold to touch, one wing dragged loosely. 'You can go, Jane,' said the Princess to the parlourmaid.

Then she got a big velvet-covered box that had had chocolate in it, and put some cotton wool in it and said to the Bat--

'You poor dear, is that comfortable?' and the Bat said:

'Quite, thanks.'

'Good gracious,' said the Princess jumping. 'I didn't know bats could talk.'

'Every one can talk,' said the Bat, 'but not every one can hear other people talking. You have a fine ear as well as a fine heart.'

'Will your wing ever get well?' asked the Princess.

'I hope so,' said the Bat. 'But let's talk about you. Do you know why you wear a veil every day except Sundays?'

'Doesn't everybody?' asked Belinda.

'Only here in the palace,' said the Bat, 'that's on your account.'

'But why?' asked the Princess.

'Look in the glass and you'll know.'

'But it's wicked to look in the glass except on Sundays--and besides they're all put away,' said the Princess.

'If I were you,' said the Bat, 'I should go up into the attic where the youngest kitchenmaid sleeps. Feel between the thatch and the wall just above her pillow, and you'll find a little round looking-glass. But come back here before you look at it.'

The Princess did exactly what the Bat told her to do, and when she had come back into the parlour and shut the door she looked in the little round glass that the youngest kitchen-maid's sweetheart had given her. And when she saw her ugly, ugly, ugly face--for you must remember she had been growing uglier every day since she was born--she screamed and then she said:

'That's not me, it's a horrid picture.'

'It is you, though,' said the Bat firmly but kindly; 'and now you see why you wear a veil all the week--and only look in the glass on Sunday.'