"We can talk a little now," she said, leading him towards the middle of the room. "My father will sleep now till the doctor wakes him to give him his medicine. It is not really medicine, though, but wine. Nothing but that, the doctor says, could have kept him so long alive. He always comes in the middle of the night to give it him with his own hands. But it makes me cry to see him waked up when so nicely asleep." "What sort of man is your doctor?" asked Curdie. "Oh, such a dear, good, kind gentleman!" replied the princess. "He speaks so softly, and is so sorry for his dear king! He will be here presently, and you shall see for yourself. You will like him very much." "Has your king-father been long ill?" asked Curdie. "A whole year now," she replied. "Did you not know? That's how your mother never got the red petticoat my father promised her. The lord chancellor told me that not only Gwyntystorm but the whole land was mourning over the illness of the good man." Now Curdie himself had not heard a word of his majesty's illness, and had no ground for believing that a single soul in any place he had visited on his journey had heard of it. Moreover, although mention had been made of his majesty again and again in his hearing since he came to Gwyntystorm, never once had he heard an allusion to the state of his health. And now it dawned upon him also that he had never heard the least expression of love to him. But just for the time he thought it better to say nothing on either point. "Does the king wander like this every night?" he asked. "Every night," answered Irene, shaking her head mournfully. "That is why I never go to bed at night. He is better during the day--a little, and then I sleep--in the dressing-room there, to be with him in a moment if he should call me. It is _so_ sad he should have only me and not my mamma! A princess is nothing to a queen!" "I wish he would like me," said Curdie, "for then I might watch by him at night, and let you go to bed, princess." "Don't you know then?" returned Irene, in wonder. "How was it you came?--Ah! you said my grandmother sent you. But I thought you knew that he wanted you." And again she opened wide her blue stars. "Not I," said Curdie, also bewildered, but very glad. "He used to be constantly saying--he was not so ill then as he is now--that he wished he had you about him." "And I never to know it!" said Curdie, with displeasure.