"I trust so, my love," he replied uneasily. "It--it's come on me at rather short notice. However!" "If Daddy and Mums are King and Queen," asked Ruby, "will Edna and me be Princesses?" "Undoubtedly you will," said the Court Godmother. "Then Clarence will be a Prince. So you see, Miss Heritage, dear, you _have_ met a Prince after all!" "Shut up, Kiddie!" said the new Crown Prince in some confusion. "And what will Miss Heritage be, Mummy?" "Miss Heritage will be what she was before, my dear--your governess." "But I shan't want one any more--we're in Fairyland now--and Fairy Princesses haven't got to do lessons. Oh, Mums, couldn't you make Miss Heritage a Princess too? Do!" "Why not?" said the Fairy, glancing at Daphne, whose colour had risen slightly. "Anybody might very well take her to be one as it is." "Miss Heritage," said Mrs. Wibberley-Stimpson, "has, I am sure, too much good sense to expect a title of any kind. She will continue to be my daughter's instructress, and I may possibly find a place for her as Mistress of the Robes or something; but it's much too early to say anything definite at--Really, Edna," she broke off suddenly, "how you can sit there calmly reading as if nothing had happened!" "I was merely running through my lecture-notes again, Mother," said Edna. "If I _am_ a Princess," she added, for the benefit of the Court Godmother, "that is no reason why I shouldn't go on cultivating my mind." "Now you're a Princess, my dear," replied her mother, "it doesn't signify to anybody whether your mind is cultivated or not." "It signifies a great deal to _me_, mother," said Edna, and resumed the study of her notes with an air of conscious merit. "I must say _one_ thing, Mrs. Fogleplug," Mrs. Wibberley-Stimpson proceeded; "it would have been more considerate if I had been given proper notice, and a reasonable time to prepare for such a complete change as this. I do feel _that_." She did; it was a great deprivation to her to have lost the opportunity of mentioning casually to her Gablehurst friends--and Lady Harriet especially--that she would shortly be leaving them to occupy a throne. "Precisely my own feeling," said Mr. Stimpson, thinking regretfully how the news would have made that confounded fellow Thistleton sit up, and of the sensation it might have produced in the train to the City. "It is, to say the least of it, unfortunate that I had no time to communicate with the other members of my firm." "And there's Clarence, too!" said his fond mother. "His Company will be quite helpless without him!" "They may be in a bit of a hole at first," he admitted, thankful now that he had said nothing about his resignation, or the readiness with which it had been accepted. "Still, no fellow is indispensable. What?" The Fairy explained that haste had been unavoidable, as it might have been injurious to the storks if they had remained longer in a climate to which they were unaccustomed.