The Prince of Graustark | Page 8

fatuously in love with his middle-aged instructress in French.
The Prince of Dawsbergen despatched an embassy of noblemen to
assure his neighbour that the match would be highly acceptable to him
and that in proper season the betrothal might be announced. But alack!
both courts overlooked the fact that there was independent American
blood in the two young people. Neither the Prince of Graustark nor the
Crown Princess of Dawsbergen,--whose mother was a Miss Beverly
Calhoun of Virginia,--was disposed to listen to the voice of expediency;
in fact, at a safe distance of three or four hundred miles, the youngsters
figuratively turned up their noses at each other and frankly confessed
that they hated each other and wouldn't be bullied into getting married,
no matter what anybody said, or something of the sort.
"S'pose I'm going to say I'll marry a girl I've never seen?" demanded
seventeen-year-old Robin, full of wrath. "Not I, my lords. I'm going to
look about a bit, if you don't mind. The world is full of girls. I'll marry
the one I happen to want or I'll not marry at all."

"But, highness," they protested, "you must listen to reason. There must
be a successor to the throne of Graustark. You would not have the
name die with you. The young Princess is--"
"Is fifteen you say," he interrupted loftily. "Come around in ten years
and we'll talk it over again. But I'm not going to pledge myself to marry
a child in short frocks, name or no name. Is she pretty?"
The lords did not know. They had not seen the young lady.
"If she is pretty you'd be sure to know it, my lords, so we'll assume she
isn't. I saw her when she was three years old, and she certainly was a
fright when she cried, and, my lords, she cried all the time. No, I'll not
marry her. Be good enough to say to the Prince of Dawsbergen that I'm
very much obliged to him, but it's quite out of the question."
And the fifteen-year-old Crown Princess, four hundred miles away,
coolly informed her doting parents that she was tired of being a
Princess anyway and very much preferred marrying some one who
lived in a cottage. In fine, she stamped her little foot and said she'd
jump into the river before she'd marry the Prince of Graustark.
"But he's a very handsome, adorable boy," began her mother.
"And half-American just as you are, my child," put in her father
encouragingly. "Nothing could be more suitable than--"
"I don't intend to marry anybody until I'm thirty at least, so that ends it,
daddy,--I mean, your poor old highness."
"Naturally we do not expect you to be married before you are out of
short frocks, my dear," said Prince Dantan stiffly. "But a betrothal is
quite another thing. It is customary to arrange these marriages years
before--"
"Is Prince Robin in love with me?"
"I--ahem!--that's a very silly question. He hasn't seen you since you

were a baby. But he will be in love with you, never fear."
"He may be in love with some one else, for all we know, so where do I
come in?"
"Come in?" gasped her father.
"She's part American, dear," explained the mother, with her prettiest
smile.
"Besides," said the Crown Princess, with finality, "I'm not even going
to be engaged to a man I've never seen. And if you insist, I'll run away
as sure as anything."
And so the matter rested. Five years have passed since the initial
overtures were made by the two courts, and although several sly
attempts were made to bring the young people to a proper
understanding of their case, they aroused nothing more than scornful
laughter on the part of the belligerents, as the venerable Baron
Dangloss was wont to call them, not without pride in his sharp old
voice.
"It all comes from mixing the blood," said the Prime Minister gloomily.
"Or improving it," said the Baron, and was frowned upon.
And no one saw the portentous shadow cast by the slim daughter of
William W. Blithers, for the simple reason that neither Graustark nor
Dawsbergen knew that it existed. They lived in serene ignorance of the
fact that God, while he was about it, put Maud Applegate Blithers into
the world on precisely the same day that the Crown Princess of
Dawsbergen first saw the light of day.
On the twenty-second anniversary of his birth, Prince Robin fared forth
in quest of love and romance, not without hope of adventure, for he was
a valorous chap with the heritage of warriors in his veins. Said he to
himself in dreamy contemplation of the long journey ahead of him: "I
will traverse the great highways that my mother trod and