The Prince and Princess rule the land well and wisely. The nurse lives with them, and does nothing but fine sewing, and only that when she wants to very much. The Prince keeps no hippopotamuses, and is consequently very popular. The five and seventy devoted pigs live in white marble sties with brass knockers and Pig on the doorplate, and are washed twice a day with Turkish sponges and soap scented with violets, and no one objects to their following the Prince when he walks abroad, for they behave beautifully, and always keep to the footpath, and obey the notices about not walking on the grass. The Princess feeds them every day with her own hands, and her first edict on coming to the throne was that the word _pork_ should never be uttered on pain of death, and should, besides, be scratched out of all the dictionaries. [Illustration: VIII KIND LITTLE EDMUND] VIII. Kind Little Edmund, or The Caves and the Cockatrice Edmund was a boy. The people who did not like him said that he was the most tiresome boy that ever lived, but his grandmother and his other friends said that he had an inquiring mind. And his granny often added that he was the best of boys. But she was very kind and very old. Edmund loved to find out about things. Perhaps you will think that in that case he was constant in his attendance at school, since there, if anywhere, we may learn whatever there is to be learned. But Edmund did not want to learn things: He wanted to find things out, which is quite different. His inquiring mind led him to take clocks to pieces to see what made them go, to take locks off doors to see what made them stick. It was Edmund who cut open the India rubber ball to see what made it bounce, and he never did see, any more than you did when you tried the same experiment. Edmund lived with his grandmother. She loved him very much, in spite of his inquiring mind, and hardly scolded him at all when he frizzled up her tortoiseshell comb in his anxiety to find out whether it was made of real tortoiseshell or of something that would burn. Edmund went to school, of course, now and then, and sometimes he could not prevent himself from learning something, but he never did it on purpose. "It is such waste of time," said he. "They only know what everybody knows. I want to find out new things that nobody has thought of but me." "I don't think you're likely to find out anything that none of the wise men in the whole world have thought of all these thousands of years," said Granny. But Edmund did not agree with her. He played truant whenever he could, for he was a kindhearted boy, and could not bear to think of a master's time and labor being thrown away on a boy like himself--who did not wish to learn, only to find out--when there were so many worthy lads thirsting for instruction in geography and history and reading and ciphering, and Mr. Smiles's "Self-Help."