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 air, till she has a couple of years schooling.

King: It would be hard to put her back to that.

Queen: I must take it in hand.  She is getting entirely too much of her own way.

Nurse: Leave her alone, and in the end it will be a good way.

Queen: To keep rules and hours she must learn, and to give in to order and good sense. (To King.) There is a pigeon messenger I brought from Alban I am about to let loose on this day with news of myself and of yourself.  I will send with it a message to a friend I have, bidding her to make ready for Nuala a place in her garden of learning and her school.

King: That is going too fast.  There is no hurry.

Queen: She is seventeen years.  There is no day to be lost.  I will go write the letter.

Nurse: Oh, you wouldn’t send away the poor child!

Dall Glic: It would be a great hardship to send her so far.  Our poor little Princess Nu!

Queen:  (Sharply.) What are saying? (Dall Glic is silent.)

King: I would not wish her to be sent out of this.

Queen: There is no other way to set her mind to sense and learning.  It will be for her own good.

Nurse: Where’s the use troubling her with lessons and with books that maybe she will never be in need of at all.  Speak up for her, King.

King: Let her stop for this year as she is.

Queen: You are all too soft and too easy.  She will turn on you and will blame you for it, and another year or two years slipped by.

Nurse: That she may!

Dall Glic: Who knows what might take place within the twelvemonth that is coming?

King: Ah, don’t be talking about it.  Maybe it never might come to pass.

Dall Glic:  It will come to pass, if there is truth in the clouds of sky.

King:  It will not be for a year, anyway.  There’ll be many an ebbing and flowing of the tide within a year.

Queen:  What at all are you talking about?

King:  Ah, where’s the use of talking too much.

Queen:  Making riddles you are, and striving to keep the meaning from your comrade, that is myself.

King:  It’s best not be thinking about the thing you would not wish, and maybe it might never come around at all.  To strive to forget a threat yourself, it might maybe be forgotten by the universe.