The Little Lame Prince | Page 9

no other, and he did not pity himself at all. Not for a long time, till he grew quite a big little boy, and could read quite easily. Then he suddenly took to books, which the deaf-mute brought him from time to time--books which, not being acquainted with the literature of Nomansland, I cannot describe, but no doubt they were very interesting; and they informed him of everything in the outside world, and filled him with an intense longing to see it.
From this time a change came over the boy. He began to look sad and thin, and to shut himself up for hours without speaking. For his nurse hardly spoke, and whatever questions he asked beyond their ordinary daily life she never answered. She had, indeed, been forbidden, on pain of death, to tell him anything about himself, who he was, or what he might have been.
He knew he was Prince Dolor, because she always addressed him as "My Prince" and "Your Royal Highness," but what a prince was he had not the least idea. He had no idea of anything in the world, except what he found in his books.
He sat one day surrounded by them, having built them up round him like a little castle wall. He had been reading them half the day, but feeling all the while that to read about things which you never can see is like hearing about a beautiful dinner while you are starving. For almost the first time in his life he grew melancholy; his hands fell on his lap; he sat gazing out of the window-slit upon the view outside--the view he had looked at every day of his life, and might look at for endless days more.
Not a very cheerful view,--just the plain and the sky,--but he liked it. He used to think, if he could only fly out of that window, up to the sky or down to the plain, how nice it would be! Perhaps when he died--his nurse had told him once in anger that he would never leave the tower till he died--he might be able to do this. Not that he understood much what dying meant, but it must be a change, and any change seemed to him a blessing.
"And I wish I had somebody to tell me all about it--about that and many other things; somebody that would be fond of me, like my poor white kitten."
Here the tears came into his eyes, for the boy's one friend, the one interest of his life, had been a little white kitten, which the deaf-mute, kindly smiling, once took out of his pocket and gave him--the only living creature Prince Dolor had ever seen.
For four weeks it was his constant plaything and companion, till one moonlight night it took a fancy for wandering, climbed on to the parapet of the tower, dropped over and disappeared. It was not killed, he hoped, for cats have nine lives; indeed, he almost fancied he saw it pick itself up and scamper away; but he never caught sight of it more.
"Yes, I wish I had something better than a kitten--a person, a real live person, who would be fond of me and kind to me. Oh, I want somebody--dreadfully, dreadfully!"
As he spoke, there sounded behind him a slight tap-tap-tap, as of a stick or a cane, and twisting himself round, he saw--what do you think he saw?
Nothing either frightening or ugly, but still exceedingly curious. A little woman, no bigger than he might himself have been had his legs grown like those of other children; but she was not a child--she was an old woman. Her hair was gray, and her dress was gray, and there was a gray shadow over her wherever she moved. But she had the sweetest smile, the prettiest hands, and when she spoke it was in the softest voice imaginable.
"My dear little boy,"--and dropping her cane, the only bright and rich thing about her, she laid those two tiny hands on his shoulders,--"my own little boy, I could not come to you until you had said you wanted me; but now you do want me, here I am."
"And you are very welcome, madam," replied the Prince, trying to speak politely, as princes always did in books; "and I am exceedingly obliged to you. May I ask who you are? Perhaps my mother?" For he knew that little boys usually had a mother, and had occasionally wondered what had become of his own.
"No," said the visitor, with a tender, half-sad smile, putting back the hair from his forehead, and looking right into his eyes--"no, I am not your mother, though she was a dear friend of mine; and you are as like her as ever you can be."
"Will you tell her to come and