Three Wonder Plays | Page 3

mind with such things. He should be hidden from every trouble and care.
_Princess:_ Was it you sent him away?
_Queen:_ Not at all. If he went it was through foolishness and pride.
_Princess:_ It is said in the house that you annoyed him.
_Queen:_ I never annoyed any person in my life, unless it might be for their own good. But it fails some to recognise their best friend. Just teaching him I was to pickle onion thinnings as it was done at the King of Alban's Court.
_Princess:_ Didn't he know that before?
_Queen:_ Whether or no, he gave me very little thanks, but turned around and asked his wages. Hurrying him and harrying him he said I was, and away with him, himself and his four-and-twenty apprentices.
_King:_ That is bad news, and pitiful news.
_Queen:_ Do not be troubling yourself at all. It will be easy find another.
_King:_ It might not be easy to find so good a one. A great pity! A dinner or a supper not to be rightly dressed is apt to give no pleasure in the eating or in the bye-and-bye.
_Queen:_ I have taken it in hand. I have a good headpiece. I put out a call with running lads and with the army captains through the whole of the five provinces; and along with that, I have it put up on tablets at the post office.
_Princess:_ I am sorry the old one to be gone. To remember him is nearly the farthest spot in my memory.
_Queen: (Sharply.)_ If you want the house to be under your hand only, it is best for you to settle into one of your own.
_Princess:_ Give me the little rush cabin by the stream and I'll be content.
_Queen:_ If you mind yourself and profit by my instruction it is maybe not a cabin you will be moving to but a palace.
_Princess:_ I'm tired of palaces. There are too many people in them.
_Queen:_ That is talking folly. When you settle yourself it must be in the station where you were born.
_Princess:_ I have no mind to settle myself yet awhile.
_Nurse:_ Ah, you will not be saying that the time Mr. Right will come down the chimney, and will give you the marks and tokens of a king.
_Queen:_ There might have some come looking for her before this, if it was not for you petting and pampering her the way you do, and encouraging her flightiness and follies. It is likely she will get no offers till such time as I will have taught her the manners and the right customs of courts.
_Nurse:_ Sure I am acquainted with courts myself. Wasn't it I fostered comely Manus that is presently King of Sorcha, since his father went out of the world? And as to lovers coming to look for her! They do be coming up to this as plenty as the eye could hold them, and she refusing them, and they laying the blame upon the King!
_King:_ That is so, they laying the blame upon myself. There was the uncle of the King of Leinster; he never sent me another car-load of asparagus from the time you banished him away.
_Princess:_ He was a widower man.
_King:_ As to the heir of Orkney, since the time you sent him to the right about, I never got so much as a conger eel from his hand.
_Princess:_ As dull as a fish he was. He had a fish's eyes.
_King:_ That wasn't so with the champion of the merings of Ulster.
_Princess:_ A freckled man. He had hair the colour of a fox.
_King:_ I wish he didn't stop sending me his tribute of heather beer.
_Queen:_ It is a poor daughter that will not wish to be helpful to her father.
_Princess:_ If I am to wed for the furnishing of my father's table, it's as good for you to wrap me in a speckled fawnskin and roast me!
_(Runs out, tossing her ball_.)
_Queen:_ She is no way fit for marriage unless with a herd to the birds of the air, till she has a couple of years schooling.
_King:_ It would be hard to put her back to that.
_Queen:_ I must take it in hand. She is getting entirely too much of her own way.
_Nurse:_ Leave her alone, and in the end it will be a good way.
_Queen:_ To keep rules and hours she must learn, and to give in to order and good sense. _(To King.)_ There is a pigeon messenger I brought from Alban I am about to let loose on this day with news of myself and of yourself. I will send with it a message to a friend I have, bidding her to make ready for Nuala a place in her garden of learning and her school.
_King:_ That is going too fast. There is no hurry.
_Queen:_ She is seventeen years. There is