Three Wonder Plays | Page 3

are telling me?
_Queen_: Do you see that you near hit the King with your ball, and,
what is worse again, you have his medicine spilled from the spoon.
_Princess: (Patting him.)_ Poor old King.
_Queen_: Have you your lessons learned?
_Princess: (Throwing books in the air.)_ Neither line nor letter of them!
Poem book! Brehon Laws! I have done with books! I am seventeen
years old to-day!
_Queen:_ There is no one would think it and you so flighty as you are.
_Princess: (To King.)_ Is it true that the cook is gone away?
_King: (Aghast.)_ What's that you're saying?

_Queen:_ Don't be annoying the King's 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