Now and then she laughed a little silvery laugh, and shook out her rippling gold-brown hair at something the being next to her said--a great boy-mortal, with a red face, bold eyes, and grasping brown hands, which were fatal to everything within their range.
How the prince did hate that boy!--he found to his joy that he could understand what they said, and began to listen jealously to their conversation.
'I say,' the boy (whose name, it seemed, was Bertie) was saying, as he received a plateful of floating fragments of the lacework palace, 'you aren't eating anything, Mabel. Don't you care about suppers? _I_ do.'
'I'm not hungry,' she said, evidently feeling this a distinction; 'I've been out so much this fortnight.'
'How jolly!' he observed, 'I only wish _I_ had. But I say,' he added confidentially, 'won't they make you take a grey powder soon? They would _me_.'
'I'm never made to take anything at all nasty,' she said--and the prince was indignant that any one should have dared to think otherwise.
'I suppose,' continued the boy, 'you didn't manage to get any of that cake the conjurer made in Uncle John's hat, did you?'
'No, indeed,' she said, and made a little face; 'I don't think I should like cake that came out of anybody's hat!'
'It was very decent cake,' he said; 'I got a lot of it. I was afraid it might spoil my appetite for supper--but it hasn't.'
'What a very greedy boy you are, Bertie,' she remarked; 'I suppose you could eat _anything_?'
'At home I think I could, pretty nearly,' he said, with a proud confidence, 'but not at old Tokoe's, I can't. Tokoe's is where I go to school, you know. I can't stand the resurrection-pie on Saturdays--all the week they save up the bones and rags and things, and when it comes up----'
'I don't want to hear,' she interrupted; 'you talk about nothing but horrid things to eat, and it isn't a bit interesting.'
Bertie allowed himself a brief interval for refreshment unalloyed by conversation, after which he began again: 'Mabel, if they have dancing after supper, dance with me.'
'Are you sure you know _how_ to dance?' she inquired rather fastidiously.
'Oh, I can get through all right,' he replied. 'I've learnt. It's not harder than drilling. I can dance the Highland Schottische and the Swedish dance, any-way.'