table before he is satisfied
—there are some would walk to the door and back
with every bite.

King: Is it that I am to eat my meal standing,
the same as a crane in a shallow, or moving from
tuft to thistle like you'd see a jennet on the high
road?

Queen: Well, at the least, let you drink down
a share of this tansy juice. I was telling you it
would be answerable to your health.

King: You are doing entirely too much for me.

Queen: Sure I am here to be comfortable to
you. This house before I came into it was but
a ship without a rudder! Here now, take the
spoon in your hand.

Dall Glic: Leave it there, Queen, and I'll
engage he'll swallow it down bye-and-bye.

Queen: Is it that you are meddling, Dall Glic?
It is time some person took you in hand. I wonder
now could that dark eye of yours be cured?

Dall Glic: It is given in that it can not, by
doctors and by druids.

Queen: That is a pity now, it gives you a sort
of a one-sided look. It might not be so hard a
thing to put out the sight of the other.

Dall Glic: I'd sooner leave them the way they
are.

Queen: I'll put a knot on my handkerchief till
such time as I can give my mind to it.... Now,
my dear (to King), make no more delay. It is
right to drink it down after your meal. The
stomach to be bare empty, the medicine might
prey upon the body till it would be wore away
and consumed.

King: Time enough. Let it settle now for
a minute.

Queen: Here, now, I'll hold your nose the way
you will not get the taste of it.

(She holds spoon to his mouth. A ball flies
in at window; he starts and medicine
is spilled.)

Princess: (Coming in with Nurse.) Is it true
what they are telling me?

Queen: Do you see that you near hit the King
with your ball, and, what is worse again, you have
his medicine spilled from the spoon.

Princess: (Patting him.) Poor old King.

Queen: Have you your lessons learned?

Princess: (Throwing books in the air.) Neither
line nor letter of them! Poem book! Brehon
Laws! I have done with books! I am seventeen
years old to-day!

Queen: There is no one would think it and
you so flighty as you are.

Princess: (To King.) Is it true that the cook
is gone away?

King: (Aghast.) What's that you're saying?

Queen: Don't be annoying the King's mind
with such things. He should be hidden from every
trouble and care.

Princess: Was it you sent him away?

Queen: Not at all. If he went it was through
foolishness and pride.

Princess: It is said in the house that you annoyed
him.

Queen: I never annoyed any person in my life,
unless it might be for their own good. But it
fails some to recognise their best friend. Just
teaching him I was to pickle onion thinnings as it
was done at the King of Alban's Court.

Princess: Didn't he know that before?

Queen: Whether or no, he gave me very little
thanks, but turned around and asked his wages.
Hurrying him and harrying him he said I was,
and away with him, himself and his four-and-twenty
apprentices.

King: That is bad news, and pitiful news.

Queen: Do not be troubling yourself at all. It
will be easy find another.

King: It might not be easy to find so good a
one. A great pity! A dinner or a supper not
to be rightly dressed is apt to give no pleasure in
the eating or in the bye-and-bye.

Queen: I have taken it in hand. I have a good
headpiece. I put out a call with running lads
and with the army captains through the whole
of the five provinces; and along with that, I have
it put up on tablets at the post office.

Princess: I am sorry the old one to be gone.
To remember him is nearly the farthest spot in
my memory.

Queen: (Sharply.) If you want the house to
be under your hand only, it is best for you to settle
into one of your own.

Princess: Give me the little rush cabin by the
stream and I'll be content.

Queen: If you mind yourself and profit by
my instruction it is maybe not a cabin you will
be moving to but a palace.

Princess: I'm tired of palaces. There are too
many people in them.

Queen: That is talking folly. When you settle
yourself it must be in the station where you were
born.

Princess: I have no mind to settle myself yet
awhile.

Nurse: Ah, you will not be saying that the
time Mr. Right will come down the chimney,
and will give you the marks and tokens of a king.

Queen: There might have some come looking
for her before this, if it was not for you petting
and pampering her the way you do, and encouraging
her flightiness and follies. It is likely she will get
no offers till such time as I will have taught her
the manners and the right customs of courts.

Nurse: Sure I am acquainted with courts myself.
Wasn't it I fostered comely Manus that is presently
King of Sorcha, since his father went out of the
world? And as to lovers coming to look for her!
They do be coming up to this as plenty as the eye
could hold them, and she refusing them, and they
laying the blame upon the King!

King: That is so, they laying the blame upon
myself. There was the uncle of the King of
Leinster; he never sent me another car-load of
asparagus from the time you banished him away.

Princess: He was a widower man.

King: As to the heir of Orkney, since the time
you sent him to the right about, I never got so
much as a conger eel from his hand.

Princess: As dull as a fish he was. He had a
fish's eyes.

King: That wasn't so with the champion of
the merings of Ulster.

Princess: A freckled man. He had hair the
colour of a fox.

King: I wish he didn't stop sending me his
tribute of heather beer.

Queen: It is a poor daughter that will not
wish to be helpful to her father.

Princess: If I am to wed for the furnishing
of my father's table, it's as good for you to wrap
me in a speckled fawnskin and roast me!

(Runs out, tossing her ball.)

Queen: She is no way fit for marriage unless
with a herd to the birds of the air, till she has a
couple of years schooling.

King: It would be hard to put her back to
that.

Queen: I must take it in hand. She is getting
entirely too much of her own way.

Nurse: Leave her alone, and in the end it will
be a good way.

Queen: To keep rules and hours she must learn,
and to give in to order and good sense. (To King.)
There is a pigeon messenger I brought from Alban
I am about to let loose on this day with news of
myself and of yourself. I will send with it a message
to a friend I have, bidding her to make ready for
Nuala a place in her garden of learning and her
school.

King: That is going too fast. There is no
hurry.

Queen: She is seventeen years. There is no
day to be lost. I will go write the letter.

Nurse: Oh, you wouldn't send away the poor
child!

Dall Glic: It would be a great hardship to
send her so far. Our poor little Princess Nu!

Queen: (Sharply.) What are saying? (Dall
Glic is silent.)

King: I would not wish her to be sent out
of this.