Part 65

'I'll tell papa,' said the Princess, sobbing.

'No, you won't,' said Taykin. 'Your father will never know. If you won't marry me you shall drink this and become my scullery maid--my hideous scullery maid--and wash up for ever in the lonely tower.'

He caught her by the wrist.

'Stop,' cried the apprentice, who was a Prince.

'Stop? Me? Nonsense! Pooh!' said the Magician.

'Stop, I say!' said James, who was Fortunatus. 'I've got your heart!' He had--and he held it up in one hand, and in the other a cooking knife.

'One step nearer that lady,' said he, 'and in goes the knife.'

The Magician positively skipped in his agony and terror.

'I say, look out!' he cried. 'Be careful what you're doing. Accidents happen so easily! Suppose your foot slipped! Then no apologies would meet the case. That's my heart you've got there. My life's bound up in it.'

'I know. That's often the case with people's hearts,' said Fortunatus. 'We've got you, my dear sir, on toast. My Princess, might I trouble you to call the guards.'

The Magician did not dare to resist, so the guards arrested him. The nurse, though in floods of tears, managed to serve up a very good plain dinner, and after dinner the Magician was brought before the King.

Now the King, as soon as he had seen that his daughter had been made so beautiful, had caused a large number of princes to be fetched by telephone. He was anxious to get her married at once in case she turned ugly again. So before he could do justice to the Magician he had to settle which of the princes was to marry the Princess. He had chosen the Prince of the Diamond Mountains, a very nice steady young man with a good income. But when he suggested the match to the Princess she declined it, and the Magician, who was standing at the foot of the throne steps loaded with chains, clattered forward and said:

'Your Majesty, will you spare my life if I tell you something you don't know?'

The King, who was a very inquisitive man, said 'Yes.'

'Then know,' said Taykin, 'that the Princess won't marry your choice, because she's made one of her own--my apprentice.'

The Princess meant to have told her father this when she had got him alone and in a good temper. But now he was in a bad temper, and in full audience.

The apprentice was dragged in, and all the Princess's agonized pleadings only got this out of the King--

'All right. I won't hang him. He shall be best man at your wedding.'

Then the King took his daughter's hand and set her in the middle of the hall, and set the Prince of the Diamond Mountains on her right and the apprentice on her left. Then he said:

'I will spare the life of this aspiring youth on your left if you'll promise never to speak to him again, and if you'll promise to marry the gentleman on your right before tea this afternoon.'

The wretched Princess looked at her lover, and his lips formed the word 'Promise.'

So she said: 'I promise never to speak to the gentleman on my left and to marry the gentleman on my right before tea to-day,' and held out her hand to the Prince of the Diamond Mountains.

Then suddenly, in the twinkling of an eye, the Prince of the Diamond Mountains was on her left, and her hand was held by her own Prince, who stood at her right hand. And yet nobody seemed to have moved. It was the purest and most high-class magic.

'Dished,' cried the King, 'absolutely dished!'

'A mere trifle,' said the apprentice modestly. 'I've got Taykin's magic recipe book, as well as his heart.'

'Well, we must make the best of it, I suppose,' said the King crossly. 'Bless you, my children.'

He was less cross when it was explained to him that the apprentice was really the Prince of the Fortunate Islands, and a much better match than the Prince of the Diamond Mountains, and he was quite in a good temper by the time the nurse threw herself in front of the throne and begged the King to let the Magician off altogether--chiefly on the ground that when he was a baby he was the dearest little duck that ever was, in the prettiest plaid frock, with the loveliest fat legs.

The King, moved by these arguments, said: