The Black Poodle Part 6

The mellow amber tottered and quivered for a while and was gone; even the solid creamy marble was hacked in pieces and absorbed; nothing, however beautiful or fantastic, escaped instant annihilation between those terrible bars of scarlet and flas.h.i.+ng ivory.

Could this be Fairyland, this plain where all things beautiful were doomed--or had they brought him back to his kingdom only to make this cruel fun of him, and destroy his riches one by one before his eyes?

But before he could find any answers to these sad questions he chanced to look straight in front of him, and there he saw a face which made his little sugar heart almost melt within him, with a curious feeling, half pleasure, half pain, that was quite new to him.

It was a girl's face, of course, and the prince had not looked at her very long before he forgot all about his kingdom.

He was relieved to see that she at least was too generous to join in the work of destruction that was going on all around her--indeed, she seemed to dislike it as much as he did himself, for only a little of the tinted snow pa.s.sed her soft lips.

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 appet.i.te 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 Sat.u.r.days--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.'

'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 pa.s.sages 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, flus.h.i.+ng angrily.

'I did though.'

'But I tell you I _didn't_!

'And _I_ say you _did_!'

'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_.

But he had begun to give up these wild fancies already, and even to fear that she would go away without having once noticed him; and now she was looking at him as if she found him pleasant to look at, as if she would like to know him.

At last, evidently after some struggle, she turned to the offending Bertie, and spoke his name softly; but Bertie could not give up the luxury of sulking with her all at once, and so he looked another way.

'Is it _Pax_, Bertie?' she asked. (She had not had brothers for nothing.)

'No, it isn't,' said Bertie.

'Oh, you want to sulk? I thought only girls sulked,' she said; 'but it doesn't matter, I only wanted to tell you something.'

His curiosity was too much for his dignity. 'Well--what?' he asked, gruffly enough.

'Only,' she said, 'that I've been thinking over things, and I dare say you _could_ fight my brothers--only not all together and I'm not sure that Charlie wouldn't beat you.'

'Charlie! I could settle him in five minutes,' muttered Bertie, only half appeased.

'Oh, not in _five_, Bertie,' cried Mabel, 'ten, perhaps; but you'd never want to, would you, when he's _my_ brother? And now,' she added, 'we're friends again, aren't we, Bertie?'

He was a cynic in his way--'I see,' he said, 'you want something out of me; you should have thought of that before you quarrelled, you know!'

Mabel contracted her eyebrows and bit her lip for a moment, then she said meekly--

'I know I should, Bertie; but I thought perhaps you wouldn't mind doing this for me. I can ask the boy on my other side--he's a stupid-looking boy, and I don't care about knowing him--still, if _you_ won't do it----'

'Oh, well, _I_ don't mind,' he said, softened at once. 'What is it you want?'