First Aunt:  That’s it, and that is what brought ourselves along with him—­to see would we be satisfied.

King:  I don’t know.  The girl is young—­she’s young.

First Aunt:  It is what we were saying, that might be no drawback.  It might be easier train her in our own ways, and to do everything that is right.

King:  Sure we are all wishful to do the thing that is right, but it’s sometimes hard to know.

Second Aunt:  Not in our place.  What the King of the Marshes would not know, his counsellors and ourselves would know.

Queen:  It will be very answerable to the Princess to be under such good guidance.

First Aunt:  For low people and for middling people it is well enough to follow their own opinion and their will.  But for the Prince’s wife to have any choice or any will of her own, the people would not believe her to be a real princess.

(Princess comes to door, listening unseen.)

King:  Ah, you must not be too strict with a girl that has life in her.

Prince:  My seven aunts that were saying they have a great distrust of any person that is lively.

First Aunt:  We would rather than the greatest beauty in the world get him a wife who would be content to stop in her home.

(Princess comes in very stately and with a fine dress.  She curtseys.  Aunts curtsey and sit down again.  Prince bows uneasily and sidles away.)

First Aunt:  Will you sit, now, between the two of us?

Princess:  It is more fitting for a young girl to stay in her standing in the presence of a king’s kindred and his son, since he is come so far to look for me.

Second Aunt:  That is a very nice thought.

Princess:  My far-off grandmother, the old people were telling me, never sat at the table to put a bit in her mouth till such time as her lord had risen up satisfied.  She was that obedient to him that if he had bidden her, she would have laid down her hand upon red coals.

(Prince looks bored and fidgets.)

First Aunt:  Very good indeed.

Princess:  That was a habit with my grandmother.  I would wish to follow in her ways.

King:  This is some new talk.

Queen:  Stop; she is speaking fair and good.

Princess:  A little verse, made by some good wife, I used to be learning.  “I always should:  Be very good:  At home should mind:  My husband kind:  Abroad obey:  What people say.”

First Aunt:  (Getting up.) To travel the world, I never thought to find such good sense before me.  Do you hear that, Prince?

Prince:  Sure I often heard yourselves shaping that sort.

Second Aunt:  I’ll engage the royal family will make no objection to this young lady taking charge of your house.