To my amazement the nine delicate leaves on the offending stem began to hang their heads and curl up, for all the world expressive of deep humility. It was another of the million or so lessons to be found in Nature for any one who sees with the right kind of eyes. Of course, I could have hung my head for that lie about the Browns, although curling up--at least, after the manner of the shame-face vine--would have required a contortionist. "A well named little weed," I laughed. "But what wouldn't be penitent after hurting such a pretty hand!" "I was just wondering," she said, ignoring this banality--for which in my heart I thanked her--"if there are weeds that show embarrassment for people who tell fibs?" Now there was no possible way for her to have learned my name! "You don't think there was any fibbing when I said you were a sure-'nough princess, do you?" "Oh, please, let's not talk of that again," she entreated. "I don't want to be a princess just yet, because it's still very satisfying to have been taken away from that awful place. I'm so humbly thankful to you," she almost whispered, "that just Cinderella without the slipper will suit me nicely." Beloved of the gods! If she wasn't at that moment princess, queen and all the royal families made into one! "But I must tell you this much," I insisted gently, "and then we won't speak of it again until you wish. Monsieur says your mother is only Regent until you come; that your destiny is marked out for you, that by every law of God and man you've got to go back and take up the Cross where you left it seventeen years ago,--that you're booked to marry a Prince, I think. And he's armed with an iron-bound authority to take you. He says you've no possible escape--though, of course, you won't want any. I have to tell you this," I continued more hastily, for it was an extremely difficult thing to say, "because I'm only an ordinary kind of American chap, as bad as the worst and as good as the best, but your court in Azuria would have forty duck fits if it knew we were playing together in the woods without a chaperone. Suppose you make me your Chancellor, or something like that--chancellor of your Oasian possessions! Then I can report for orders and escort you about with all propriety, and we can talk and laugh occasionally without having some big soldier stick me in the back with his halberd." She had been listening attentively, gravely, to everything I said until this last, when she burst into a scream of laughter, rocking herself to and fro in a transport of merriment. "You're the funniest thing I ever saw!--but so be it, Mr. Jack Brown-Bangs, et cetera, et cetera! I make you my Royal Chancellor, responsible for the welfare of our Oasis!" "And for the protection of Your Serenity," I bowed, really feeling as if I'd been knighted.