brown, and not a sign of grey could be discovered even with a magnifying glass.  The heart of the young mother was filled with alarm, and she called the old nurse who had taken care of her dead husband when he was a baby, to ask her what had happened at his baptism, and the old woman burst into tears, and ended by betraying the gloomy forecasts of the Astrologer and wise men.  That a Greylock should go through life without the white curl was unheard of, was awful!  And the old nurse called the poor little creature, “an ill-starred child, a dear pitiable princeling.”

Then the mother recalled her last dream, in which she had seen a dragon attack her youngest boy.  A great fear possessed her heart, and she bade them bring the child to her.  When they laid him naked before her, she stroked the little round body, the straight back, and well-shaped legs with her weak hands, and felt comforted.  He was a beautifully-formed, well-developed child, her child, her very own, and nothing was lacking save the grey lock.  She never wearied of looking at him; at last she leaned over him and whispered:  “You sweet little darling, you are just as good, and just as much of a Greylock as your brother.  He will be duke, but that is no great piece of luck, and we will not begrudge it to him.  His subjects will some day give him enough anxiety.  He must grow to be a mighty man for their sakes, and I doubt not that his nurse gives him better nourishment to that end than I could who am only a weak woman.  But you, you poor, dear, little ill-omened mite, I shall nourish you myself, and if your life is unhappy it shall not be because I have not done my best.”

When the Chief Priest came to her, to ask her what name she had chosen for the second boy—­the first, of course, was to be Wendelin XVI—­she remembered her dream, and answered quickly:  “Let him be named George, for it was he who killed the dragon.”

The old man understood her meaning, and answered earnestly:  “That is a good name for him.”

Time passed, and both of the princes flourished.  George was nourished by his own mother, Wendelin by a hired nurse.  They learned to babble and coo, then to walk and talk, for in this respect the sons of dukes with grey locks are just like other boys.  And yet no two children are alike, and if any schoolmaster tried to write an exhaustive treatise on the subject of education, it would have to contain as many chapters as there are boys and girls in the world, and it would not be one of the thinnest books ever published.

The ducal twins from the beginning exhibited great differences.  Wendelin’s hair was straight and, save for the grey lock, which hung over his left temple like a mark of interrogation, jet black; George, on the contrary, had curly brown hair.  Their size remained equal until their seventh year, when the younger brother began to outstrip the older.  They loved one another very fondly, but the amusements that pleased one failed to attract the other; even their eyes seemed to have been made on different patterns, for many things that seemed white to George appeared black to his brother.