The Prince's eye flashed with a curious light; he smiled good-humoredly. "I think it is very interesting," said he. "When will it be allowed that I shall see her?" CHAPTER XIII A PROMISSORY NOTE I On their return to Jingalo the Princess heard from her parents how badly she had behaved. "But I had to do it!" she protested. "After what that paper had said, and all the other things, how else could I show that I hadn't come on purpose?" "And pray, do you always mean running away from him?" inquired the Queen. "I shan't go to Bad-as-Bad again, I know that." "But if he comes here." "Why, are you going to ask him?" "He has asked himself," said her father. "Oh!" This came as a surprise. "But, of course," he continued, "if you mean to go on being rude to him, it wouldn't do." "I have never been rude to him!" protested Charlotte. "I only refused to be trapped into meeting him. I shouldn't have minded if it had just been by accident; but it wasn't." "I'm afraid it can never be by accident now," replied her father. "But you needn't be here when he arrives, or when he goes; though in between whiles, of course, you would have to meet him. And then--well, if you wanted to see more of each other--he might come again." Charlotte showed her distaste for any temporizing of that sort. "The only difference I can see," she remarked, "is that first you were for offering me to him openly and now I'm to be a sandwich." "You are not to be anything you don't like, my dear," said her father with gentleness. "But you know, child, we have not the whole world to choose from; being kings and queens and princesses doesn't make life a fairy tale." "But it does, when we have to end by marrying princes. That's the bother of it." "Well, I am trying to make it easier for you. Oh, I admit the drawbacks; but why make them out worse than they are?" Charlotte's moods always softened under her father's cajolery; not that she was more fond of him than of her mother; but these two had more ground for mutual sympathy and understanding; and pity for his vaguely harassed countenance was never far absent from her heart. "I am having just now," the King went on, "a very trying and disturbing time--in ways that I don't want to talk about. Do try, child, not to add to my anxieties." Charlotte, feeling compunction working within her, thought hard for a while. "Before he comes----" she said, and stopped. "Papa, when does he come?" "Not till after the winter session has opened--perhaps about Christmas." "Well, before he comes, then, I want to go away quite by myself for three weeks or a fortnight, and then--I'll think about it. If, when the time comes, you want me to see him I will, and I promise not to be rude to him. But he shan't think that I have been waiting for him, or that I want to have anything to do with him; I shall make that quite plain."