Three Wonder Plays | Page 2

with their squawking, and the enchanted swans raising up their heads and pecking at the beadwork on my gown.
_King_: Ah, she has a wish for the birds of the air, that are by nature light and airy the same as herself.
_Queen:_ It is time for her to turn her mind to good sense. What's that? (Whipping cloth from tray.) Is it that you are eating again, and it is but one half-hour since your breakfast?
_King_: Ah, that wasn't a breakfast you'd call a breakfast.
_Queen_: Very healthy food, oaten meal flummery with whey, and a griddle-cake; dandelion tea and sorrel from the field.
_King_: My old fathers ate their enough of wild herbs and the like in the early time of the world. I'm thinking that it is in my nature to require a good share of nourishment as if to make up for the hardships they went through.
_Queen_: What now have you within that pastry wall?
_King_: It is but a little leveret pie.
_Queen: (Poking with fork.)_ Leveret! What's this in it? The thickness of a blanket of beef; calves' sweetbreads; cocks' combs; balls mixed with livers and with spice. You to so much as taste of it, you'll be crippled and crappled with the gout, and roaring out in your pain.
_King_: I tell you my generations have enough done of fasting and for making little of the juicy meats of the world.
_Queen_: And the waste of it! Goose eggs and jellies.... That much would furnish out a dinner for the whole of the King of Alban's Court. _King_: Ah, I wouldn't wish to be using anything at all, only for to gather strength for to steer the business of the whole of the kingdom!
_Queen_: Have you enough ate now, my dear? Are you satisfied?
_King:_ I am not. I would wish for a little taste of that saffron cake having in it raisins of the sun.
_Queen_: Saffron! Are you raving? You to have within you any of the four-and-twenty sicknesses of the race, it would throw it out in red blisters on your skin.
_King_: Let me just taste one little slab of that venison ham.
_Queen: (Poking with a fork.)_ It would take seven chewings! Sudden death it would be! Leave it alone now and rise up. To keep in health every man should quit the table before he is satisfied --there are some would walk to the door and back with every bite.
_King_: Is it that I am to eat my meal standing, the same as a crane in a shallow, or moving from tuft to thistle like you'd see a jennet on the high road?
_Queen_: Well, at the least, let you drink down a share of this tansy juice. I was telling you it would be answerable to your health.
_King_: You are doing entirely too much for me.
_Queen_: Sure I am here to be comfortable to you. This house before I came into it was but a ship without a rudder! Here now, take the spoon in your hand.
_Dall Glic_: Leave it there, Queen, and I'll engage he'll swallow it down bye-and-bye.
_Queen_: Is it that you are meddling, Dall Glic? It is time some person took you in hand. I wonder now could that dark eye of yours be cured?
_Dall Glic_: It is given in that it can not, by doctors and by druids.
_Queen_: That is a pity now, it gives you a sort of a one-sided look. It might not be so hard a thing to put out the sight of the other.
_Dall Glic_: I'd sooner leave them the way they are.
_Queen_: I'll put a knot on my handkerchief till such time as I can give my mind to it.... Now, my dear (_to King_), make no more delay. It is right to drink it down after your meal. The stomach to be bare empty, the medicine might prey upon the body till it would be wore away and consumed.
_King_: Time enough. Let it settle now for a minute.
_Queen_: Here, now, I'll hold your nose the way you will not get the taste of it.
(_She holds spoon to his mouth. A ball flies in at window; he starts and medicine is spilled_.)
_Princess: (Coming in with Nurse.)_ Is it true what they are telling me?
_Queen_: Do you see that you near hit the King with your ball, and, what is worse again, you have his medicine spilled from the spoon.
_Princess: (Patting him.)_ Poor old King.
_Queen_: Have you your lessons learned?
_Princess: (Throwing books in the air.)_ Neither line nor letter of them! Poem book! Brehon Laws! I have done with books! I am seventeen years old to-day!
_Queen:_ There is no one would think it and you so flighty as you are.
_Princess: (To King.)_ Is it true that the cook is gone away?
_King: (Aghast.)_ What's that you're saying?
_Queen:_ Don't be annoying the King's