Servant:  No wonder the time to pass easy and quiet where you are, with comfort all around you, and nothing to mark its course, and every season feeling the same as another, within the glass walls and the crystal roof of this place.  And the old Queen, your godmother, sending her own Chamberlain to take charge of you, and to be your Guardian, and Governor of the Island.  Sure, the wind itself must slacken coming to this sheltered place.

3rd Prince:  That is a great thing.  I would not wish the rough wind to be blowing upon me.

4th Prince:  Or the dust to be rising and coming in among us to spoil our suits.

5th Prince:  Or to be walking out on the hard roads, or climbing over stone walls, or tearing ourselves in hedges.

1st Prince:  That is the reason we were sent here by the Queen, our Godmother, in place of being sent to any school.  To be kept safe and secure.

2nd Prince:  Not to be running here and there like our own poor five first cousins, that used to be slipping out and rambling in their young youth, till they were swallowed up by the sea.

3rd Prince:  It was maybe by some big fish of the sea.

2nd Prince:  It might be they were brought away by sea-robbers coming in a ship.

3rd Prince:  Foolish they were and very foolish not to stay in peace and comfort in the house where they were safe.

Servant:  There is no fear of ye stirring from where you are, having every whole thing ye can wish.

4th Prince:  Here is the Guardian coming!

(They all rise.)

Guardian:  (A very old man, much encumbered with wraps, coming slowly in.) Are you all here, all the five of you?

All:  We are here!

Guardian:  (Standing, leaning on a stick, to address them.) It’s a pity that these being holidays, your teachers and tutors are far away.

Gone off afloat in a cedar boat to a College of
Learning out in Cathay.

1st Prince:  It’s a pity indeed they’re not here to-day.

Guardian:  For it’s likely you looked in your almanacs, or judged by the shape of the lessening moon, That your Godmother’s Dowager Messengers are due to arrive this afternoon.

2nd Prince:  We did and we think they’ll be here very soon.

Guardian:  But I know they’ll be glad that each royal lad, put under my rule in place of a school, Can fashion his life without trouble or strife, and be shielded from care in a nice easy chair.

3rd Prince:  As we always are and we always were.

Guardian:  It is part of my knowledge that lads in a college, and made play one and all with a bat and a ball, Come often to harm with a knock on the arm, and their hands get as hard as the hands of a clown.

4th Prince:  But ours are as soft as thistledown.