The Little Lame Prince | Page 3

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The Little Lame Prince
By MISS MULOCK [Pseudonym of Maria Dinah Craik]
CONTENTS
THE LITTLE LAME PRINCE THE INVISIBLE PRINCE PRINCE
CHERRY THE PRINCE WITH THE NOSE THE FROG-PRINCE
CLEVER ALICE

THE LITTLE LAME PRINCE
CHAPTER I
Yes, he was the most beautiful Prince that ever was born.
Of course, being a prince, people said this; but it was true besides.
When he looked at the candle, his eyes had an expression of earnest

inquiry quite startling in a new born baby. His nose--there was not
much of it certainly, but what there was seemed an aquiline shape; his
complexion was a charming, healthy purple; he was round and fat,
straight- limbed and long--in fact, a splendid baby, and everybody was
exceedingly proud of him, especially his father and mother, the King
and Queen of Nomansland, who had waited for him during their happy
reign of ten years--now made happier than ever, to themselves and their
subjects, by the appearance of a son and heir.
The only person who was not quite happy was the King's brother, the
heir presumptive, who would have been king one day had the baby not
been born. But as his majesty was very kind to him, and even rather
sorry for him--insomuch that at the Queen's request he gave him a
dukedom almost as big as a county--the Crown- Prince, as he was
called, tried to seem pleased also; and let us hope he succeeded.
The Prince's christening was to be a grand affair. According to the
custom of the country, there were chosen for him four-and-twenty god-
fathers and godmothers, who each had to give him a name, and promise
to do their utmost for him. When he came of age, he himself had to
choose the name--and the godfather or god- mother--that he liked the
best, for the rest of his days.
Meantime all was rejoicing. Subscriptions were made among the rich to
give pleasure to the poor; dinners in town-halls for the workingmen;
tea-parties in the streets for their wives; and milk-and-bun feasts for the
children in the schoolrooms. For Nomansland, though I cannot point it
out in any map, or read of it in any history, was, I believe, much like
our own or many another country.
As for the palace--which was no different from other palaces--it was
clean "turned out of the windows," as people say, with the preparations
going on. The only quiet place in it was the room which, though the
Prince was six weeks old, his mother the Queen had never quitted.
Nobody said she was ill, however--it would have been so inconvenient;
and as she said nothing about it herself, but lay pale and placid, giving
no trouble to anybody, nobody thought much about her. All the world
was absorbed in admiring the baby.

The christening-day came at last, and it was as lovely as the Prince
himself. All the people in the palace were lovely too--or thought
themselves so--in the elegant new clothes which the Queen, who
thought of everybody, had taken care to give them, from the
ladies-in-waiting down to the poor little kitchen-maid, who looked at
herself in her pink cotton gown, and thought, doubtless, that there never
was such a pretty girl as she.
By six in the morning all the royal household had dressed itself in its
very best; and then the little Prince was dressed in his best--his
magnificent christening robe; which proceeding his Royal Highness did
not like at all, but kicked and screamed like any common baby. When
he had a little calmed down, they carried him to be looked at by the
Queen his mother, who, though her royal robes had been brought and
laid upon the bed, was, as everybody well knew, quite unable to rise
and put them on.
She admired her baby very much; kissed and blessed him, and lay
looking at him, as she did for hours sometimes,