“The Princess Who Could Not Speak.”
“It was a beautiful country where the princess lived, but the little princess was very lonely there, because she never had anybody to play with. I cannot begin to tell you how lonely the princess was. She was so lonely that she thought it would make her sick, and when she found it did n’t, she wished it would make her sick. Then she thought it would get better when she was grown up; but it did n’t—it got worse. You see, it was all on account of the enchantment: it was because she could not speak. When she was a little girl she had tried to be friends with the little dukes and duchesses of the court. She wonld hold out her hand and stand and look at them, but they would back away.
‘Why don’t you say something?’ they would say. ‘Why don't you speak?’ ‘No, we do not want you in our game. We do not like people who cannot calk. You are so queer!’
“Then the little princess tried to he friends with the pine-trees. There were beautiful pine-trees in her country, but when the princess pat her arms around their trunks the pines just went on singing, singing to the sun—and that music was sweet to listen to, but it was lonely music, and it hurt. Presently the princess gave up trying to be friends with any one, and took to sitting on the rocks by herself, and wondering why she was enchanted. It never is very clear to anybody why a princess is enchanted, except that it never seems to be the princess’s fault; she ’s just got to stand it, that ’s all, So this little princess knew she had to stand it—that she could n’t speak, not one single word, though she was just bursting with things to say. She wanted to say ‘How beautiful!’ when she looked oat of her casement and saw the moonlight on the waves, and she wanted to say ‘I am sorry’ when people were hurt; but most of all she wanted to say ‘I love you’ to the people who were good and sweet. But she was dumb, and she wondered if things would ever be better; for it all depended on the prince. People did n’t like the princess, because she was dumb and queer and different; but the prince must love her in spite of all this, and he must say so, and then the princess would say, ‘I love you,’ and after that she would be able to speak all the things stored up alll her life in her heart. Those were the terms of the enchantment written out in the great parchment books that the princess had read. But would the prince ever come? The loneliness hurt more every day, but would he ever come?”
Clang-bang It was the gong for change of class, and we filed out into the hall, the quietest class I ever beheld, We looked so queer that the girls from the other class-room came crowding around to know what on earth had happened, and we were in no mood for telling just then. But by evening it was different. It was Friday, and Miss Noble made chocolate for us in her room at nine o’clock—no dress-up oceasion, just a kimono-and-slippers function, where each girl provides her own cup and saucer, and afterward washes the same. Of course the whole conversation was about Little X, and what in the world was to be done about it. And, as if things were n’t bad enough already, Miss Noble told us something that made me feel meaner than an angleworm in a zoölogy tin pan. She said the reason she had n’t told us before was that she thought it would be a great deal better for all concerned if we should be nice to Little X just naturally, and not because we knew all about it; and Miss Noble said that girls are so silly she was afraid we ’d think Little X queer—crazy, I mean—if she told us.
She said that Mr. Prentiss had told Miss Brathwaite all about it. Little X had been a very bright, jolly sort of girl until the summer before, when she had had a dreadful attack of typhoid fever. She was a long time getting well—and even now she is n’t nearly so strong as she looks, and needs some one to keep looking after her. When she did recover she was different. ‘They did n’t discover it at once, and when they did they felt perfectly awful about it—her family, I mean. Little X was just as bright as she had been before, but she was queer and quiet and melancholy, like another person, The doctor advised a complete change, and so her father brought her East to this school where the girls are supposed to be particularly jolly and healthy and happy, and he hoped she ’d get right into the life and come to be her own old self once more.
I don’t ever want to feel again the way I did when Miss Noble finished her remarks, Judy, however, was argumentative, as usual.
“But, Miss Noble, what can we do? She just won't be friendly. We ‘ve tried.”
“It will be hard,” said Miss Noble.
Just then I felt a sudden stiffening inside. I groaned inwardly, but outwardly I said, “I must go up to the nursery before it ’s shut up, to get some medicine for my cold.” Then I pulled myself up and pushed myself out of the door; you see, I knew I was going to be it—that I was going to make Natalie Prentiss talk. I went to the nursery, but that did n’t take long. Cass was safe in Miss Noble's room.