But never mind all that. I must tell you what happened. As I said, it was a glorious afternoon, and I found my uncle and aunt sitting in the great hallway before a fire, laughing and talking together very happily. When I saw how contented they were with each other, and how perfectly they fitted into that beautiful home, I was able to comfort myself by thinking of all they had to make their life rich. They did not, as I have so often said, really need me.
So, without even waiting to change from my habit to my house garments, I went up to them and kissed them both, and then I stood by the side of the great fireplace and prayed for the right words to come. All I could think of was this—or something like this:
“Uncle David,” I began, “Aunt Lorena, I have come to say something very important.”
Uncle David looked up sharply. I had had a letter that morning from Gerald Hargreaves and he knew it. I think he thought that what I had to say related to that. So I shook my head at him, and he knew I had been reading his thoughts.
“It has to do,” I said, “with a princess who was not fit to be a princess. She was a princess with a very queer life. She had her high inheritance, but she was born in poverty for all of that, and she was reared in poverty, and in the days when she was poor she used to dream that some day her kingdom would be given to her, and that she would find her own people and live with them, beloved and loving. There was no reason to suppose this dream would ever come true, and certainly the princess never supposed it would. Dreaming the dream was just a game that she played to pass away the time.
“Then, one day, by the strangest chance, her people found her—her own people—and so kind and noble were they that they at once acknowledged her and took her to her own kingdom—though it might all have been theirs had they not been so good and true that it was a pleasure to them to do right and to divide it between themselves and her. They did all they could to make the princess happy. The great house and the garden, the fields and woods, were for her to enjoy. She was taken on a journey to beautiful lands. She was given tutors and books, gowns and jewels, a horse after her own heart and many luxuries which it would take too long to name. But there was one thing she did not have, and that was the right to make her own choice of the sort of life she wished to lead. She must stay within her kingdom, she must marry the prince that her kin should choose, and she must live as became one of her rank.