1st Dowager Messenger:  Ask them to say something they do know.

Guardian:  Here, you’re good at arithmetic, say now your numbers.

1st Wrenboy:  Twelve coppers make a shilling.  I never handled more than that.

Guardian:  (Angrily.) Well, do as the lady said, tell us something you do know.

2nd Wrenboy:  (Standing up, excited.) I know the way to make bird-lime, steeping willow rods in the stream....

3rd Wrenboy:  I know how to use my fists; I knocked a tinker bigger than myself.

4th Wrenboy:  I am the best at wrestling.  I knocked himself. (Pointing at 3rd.)

5th Wrenboy:  I that can skin a fawn after catching him running!

2nd Dowager Messenger.  Where now did you get that learning?

5th Wrenboy:  Here and there, rambling the woods, sleeping out at night.  I would never starve in any place where grass grows!

1st Dowager Messenger:  This is worse than neglect.  The poor old Guardian the Queen put her trust in must be in his dotage.

Guardian:  (Hastily.) Here, there is at least one thing you will not fail in.  Take the harp (hands it to the 1st Wrenboy) and draw out of it sweet sounds, (To Dowager Messengers.) He can play a tune so sweet it has been known to send all the hearers into a sound sleep.  Here now, touch the strings with all your skill.

(1st Wrenboy bangs harp, making a crash.)

2nd Dowager Messenger:  (With hands to ears.) Mercy!  Our poor ears!

1st Dowager Messenger:  That is the poorest music we have ever heard.

2nd Dowager Messenger:  That sound would send no one into their sleep.  It would be more likely to send them into Bedlam.

1st Dowager Messenger:  Whatever they knew last year, they have forgotten it all now.

Guardian:  (Weeping into his handkerchief.) I don’t know what has come upon them!  At noon they were the most charming lads in the whole world.  Their memory seems to have left them!

2nd Dowager Messenger:  It is as if another memory had come to them.  They did not learn those wild tricks shut up in the garden.

Servant:  (To Boys.) Can’t ye behave nice and not ugly? (To Guardian.) You would not believe me a while ago.  I said and I say still there is enchantment on them, and spells.

Guardian:  Oh, I would be sorry to think such a thing.  But they never went on this way in their greenest youth.

2nd Dowager Messenger:  If there is a spell upon them what way can it be taken off?

Servant:  It is what I always heard, that to make a rod of iron red in the fire, and to burn the enchantment out of them is the only way.

Guardian:  Oh, boys, do you hear that!  You would not like to be burned with a red hot rod!  Say out now what at all is the matter with you?  What is it you feel within you that is putting you from your gentle ways?