'Any one can dance those. I don't call that dancing,' she said.
'Well, but try me once, Mabel; say you will,' said he.
'I don't believe they will have dancing,' she said; 'there are so many very young children here and they get in the way so. But I hope there won't be any more games--games are stupid.'
'Only to girls,' said Bertie; 'girls never care about any fun.'
'Not _your_ kind of fun,' she said, a little vaguely. 'I don't mind hide-and-seek in a nice old house with long passages and dark corners and secret panels--and ghosts even--that's jolly; but I don't care much about running round and round a row of silly chairs, trying to sit down when the music stops and keep other people out--I call it rude.'
'You didn't seem to think it so rude just now,' he retorted; 'you were laughing quite as much as any one; and I saw you push young Bobby Meekin off the last chair of all, and sit on it yourself, anyhow.'
'Bertie, you didn't,' she cried, flushing angrily.
'If you will go on saying I did, when I'm quite sure I never did anything of the sort,' she said, 'please don't speak to me again; I shan't answer if you do. And I think you're a particularly ill-bred boy--not polite, like my brothers.'
'Your brothers are every bit as rude as I am. If they aren't, they're milksops--I should be sorry to be a milksop.'
'My brothers are not milksops--they could fight _you_!' she cried, with a little defiant ring in her voice that the prince thought perfectly charming.
'As if a girl knew anything about fighting,' said Bertie; 'why, I could fight your brothers all stuck in a row!'
'_That_ you couldn't,' from Mabel, and 'I could then, so _now_!' from Bertie, until at last Mabel refused to answer any more of Bertie's taunts, as they grew decidedly offensive; and, finding that she took refuge in disdainful silence, he consumed tart after tart with gloomy determination.
And then all at once, Mabel, having nothing to do, chanced to look across to the white dome on which the prince was standing, and she opened her beautiful grey eyes with a pleased surprise as she saw him.
All this time the prince had been falling deeper and deeper in love with her; at first he had felt almost certain that she was a princess and his destined bride; he was rather small for her, certainly, though he did not know how _very_ much smaller he was; but Fairyland, he had always been told, was full of resources--he could easily be filled out to her size, or, better still, she might be brought down to _his_.