“It does not please me,” said the King, with a sigh. “He ought to be far more forward than he is now ought he not, brother? You, who have so many children, must know. Is there not something wrong about him?” “Oh, no,” said the Crown-Prince, exchanging meaning looks with the nurse, who did not understand at all, but stood frightened and trembling with the tears in her eyes. “Nothing to make your Majesty at all uneasy. No doubt his Royal Highness will outgrow it in time.” “Outgrow--what?” “A slight delicacy--ahem!--in the spine; something inherited, perhaps, from his dear mother.” “Ah, she was always delicate; but she was the sweetest woman that ever lived. Come here, my little son.” And as the Prince turned round upon his father a small, sweet, grave face,--so like his mother's,--his Majesty the King smiled and held out his arms. But when the boy came to him, not running like a boy, but wriggling awkwardly along the floor, the royal countenance clouded over. “I ought to have been told of this. It is terrible--terrible! And for a prince too. Send for all the doctors in my kingdom immediately.” They came, and each gave a different opinion and ordered a different mode of treatment. The only thing they agreed in was what had been pretty well known before, that the Prince must have been hurt when he was an infant--let fall, perhaps, so as to injure his spine and lower limbs. Did nobody remember? No, nobody. Indignantly, all the nurses denied that any such accident had happened, was possible to have happened, until the faithful country nurse recollected that it really had happened on the day of the christening. For which unluckily good memory all the others scolded her so severely that she had no peace of her life, and soon after, by the influence of the young lady nurse who had carried the baby that fatal day, and who was a sort of connection of the Crown-Prince--being his wife's second cousin once removed--the poor woman was pensioned off and sent to the Beautiful Mountains from whence she came, with orders to remain there for the rest of her days. But of all this the King knew nothing, for, indeed, after the first shock of finding out that his son could not walk, and seemed never likely to he interfered very little concerning him. The whole thing was too painful, and his Majesty never liked painful things. Sometimes he inquired after Prince Dolor, and they told him his Royal Highness was going on as well as could be expected, which really was the case. For, after worrying the poor child and perplexing themselves with one remedy after another, the Crown-Prince, not wishing to offend any of the differing doctors, had proposed leaving him to Nature; and Nature, the safest doctor of all, had come to his help and done her best. He could not walk, it is true; his limbs were mere useless appendages to his body; but the body itself was strong and sound. And his face was the same as ever--just his mother's face, one of the sweetest in the world.