wife, I used to be learning. "I always should:
Be very good: At home should mind: My husband
kind: Abroad obey: What people say."

First Aunt: (Getting up.) To travel the world,
I never thought to find such good sense before me.
Do you hear that, Prince?

Prince: Sure I often heard yourselves shaping
that sort.

Second Aunt: I'll engage the royal family will
make no objection to this young lady taking charge
of your house.

Princess: I can do that! (Counts on fingers.)
To send linen to the washing-tub on Monday, and
dry it on Tuesday, and to mangle it Wednesday,
and starch it Thursday, and iron it Friday, and
fold it in the press against Sunday!

Second Aunt: Indeed there is little to learn
you! And on Sundays, now, you will go driving
in a painted coach, and your dress sewed with gold
and with pearls, and the poor of the world envying
you on the road.

Queen: (Claps hands.) There is no one but
must envy her, and all that is before her for her
lifetime!

First Aunt: Here is the golden arm-ring the
Prince brought for to slip over your hand.

Second Aunt: It was put on all our generations of
queens at the time of the making of their match.

Princess: (Drawing back her hand.) Mine is
not made yet.

First Aunt: Didn't you hear me saying, and
the Prince saying, there is nothing could be laid
down against it.

Princess: There is one thing against it.

Queen: Oh, there can be nothing worth while!

Princess: A thing you would think a great
drawback and all your kindred would think it.

Queen: (Rapidly.) There is nothing, but maybe
that she is not so tall as you might think, through
the length of the heels of her shoes.

Second Aunt: We would put up with that much.

Princess: (Rapidly.) It is that there was a
spell put upon me—by a water-witch that was of
my kindred. At some hours of the day I am as
you see me, but at other hours I am changed into
a sea-filly from the Country-under-Wave. And
when I smell salt on the west wind I must race and
race and race. And when I hear the call of the
gulls or the sea-eagles over my head, I must leap
up to meet them till I can hardly tell what is my
right element, is it the high air or is it the loosened
spring-tide!

Queen: Stop your nonsense talk. She is gone
wild and raving with the great luck that is come
to her!

(Prince has stood up, and is watching her
eagerly.)

Princess: I feel a wind at this very time that
is blowing from the wilderness of the sea, and
I am changing with it.... There. (Pulls down
her hair.) Let my mane go free! I will race
you, Prince, I will race you! The wind of March
will not overtake me, Prince, and I running on the
top of the white waves!

(Runs out; Prince entranced, rushes to door.)

Aunts: (Catching hold of him.) Are you going
mad wild like herself?

Prince: Oh, I will go after her!

First Aunt: (Clutching him) Do not! She
will drag you to destruction.

Prince: (Struggling to door.) What matter! Let
me go or she will escape me! (Shaking himself
free.) I will never stop till I come to her.

(He rushes out, Second Aunt still holding on
to him.)

First Aunt: What at all has come upon him?
I never knew him this way before!

(She trots after him.)

Princess: (Comes leaping in by window.) They
are gone running the road to Muckanish! But
they won't find me!

Queen: You have a right to be ashamed of
yourself and your play-game. It's easy for you
to go joking, having neither cark nor care: that
is no way to treat the second best match in Ireland!

King: You were saying you had your mind
made up to take him.

Princess: It failed me to do it! Himself and
his counsellors and his seven aunts!

Queen: He will give out that you are crazed
and mad.

Princess: He will be thankful to his life's end
to have got free of me!

King: I don't know. It seemed to me he
was better pleased with you in the finish than
in the commencement. But I'm in dread his
father may not be well pleased.

Princess: (Patting him.) Which now of the
two of you is the most to be pitied? He to
have such a timid son or you to have such an unruly
daughter?

Queen: It is likely he will make an attack on
you. There was a war made by the King of Britain
on the head of a terrier pup that was sent to him
and that made away on the road following hares.
It's best for you to make ready to put yourself at
the head of your troop.

King: It's long since I went into my battle
dress. I'm in dread it would not close upon my
chest.

Queen: Ah, it might, so soon as you would
go through a few hardships in the fight.

King: If the rest of Adam's race was of my
opinion there'd be no fighting in the world at
all.

Queen: It is this child's stubbornness is leading
you into it. Go out, Nuala, after the Prince. Tell
him you are sorry you made a fool of him.

Princess: He was that before—thinking to
put me sitting and sewing in a cushioned chair,
listening to stories of kings making a slaughter
of one another.

Queen: Tell him you have changed your mind,
that you were but funning; that you will wed
with him yet.

Princess: I would sooner wed with the King
of Poison! I to have to go to his kingdom, I'd
sooner go earning my wages footing turf, with a
skirt of heavy flannel and a dress of the grey frieze!
Himself and his bogs and his frogs!

Queen: I tell you it is time for you to take a
husband.

Princess: You said that before! And I was
giving in a while ago, and I felt the blood of my
heart to be rising against it! And I will not give
in to you again! It is my own business and I will
take my own way.

Queen: (To King.) This is all one with the
raving of a hag against heaven!

King: What the Queen is saying is right. Try
now and come around to it.

Princess: She has set you against me with her
talk!

Queen: (To King.) It is best for you to lay
orders on her.

Princess: The King is not under your
orders!

Queen: You are striving to make him give in
to your own!

King: I will take orders from no one at all!

Queen: Bid her go bring back the Prince.

Princess: I say that I will not!

Queen: She is standing up against you! Will
you give in to that?

King: I am bothered with the whole of you!
I will give in to nothing at all!

Queen: Make her do your bidding so.

King: Can't you do as you are told?

Princess: This concerns myself.

King: It does, and the whole of us.

Princess: Do you think you can force me to
wed?

King: I do think it, and I will do it.

Princess: It will fail you!

King: It will not! I was too easy with you
up to this.

Princess: Will you turn me out of the house?

King: I will give you my word, it is little but
I will!

Princess: Then I have no home and no father!
It is to my mother you must give an account.
You know well it is with the first wife you will go
at the Judgment!

Queen: Is it that you would make