“I will read the prologue while she rests,” said Jasper.

“So you can,” said Polly.  “Take care, child,” in alarm, “you mustn’t curl up in the corner like that; princesses don’t ever do so.”

“Don’t they?” said Phronsie, flying off from the lovely corner, to straighten out again into the dignity required; “not when they are little girls, Polly?”

“No, indeed,” said Polly, with a rescuing hand among the silver spangles and lace; they must never forget that they are princesses, Phronsie.  There now, you’re all right.”

“Oh!” said Phronsie, sitting quite stiffly, glad if she could not be comfortable, she could be a princess.

“‘Gentle ladies and brave sirs,’” began Jasper in a loud, impressive tone, from the temporary stage, the large rug in front of the crackling hearth fire.

Clare burst into a laugh.  “See here now,” cried Jasper, brandishing his text at him, “if you embarrass me like that, you may leave, you old dragon!”

“You ought to see your face,” cried Clare.  “Jap, you are anything but a hit.”

“You’ll be yet,” declared Jasper with a pretended growl, and another flourish of the manuscript.

“Go on, do,” implored Polly, “I think it is lovely.  Clare, you really ought to be ashamed,” and she shook her brown head severely at him.

“If I don’t quench such melodrama in the outset,” said Clare, “he’ll ruin us all.  Fair ladies and brave sirs,” mimicking to perfection Jasper’s tones.

“Thank you for a hint,” cried Jasper, pulling out his pencil.  “I didn’t say ‘fair’; that’s better than ‘gentle.’  I wish critics would always be so useful as to give one good idea.  Heigho! here goes again: 

“’Fair ladies and brave sirs,
The player’s art is to amuse,
Instruct, or to confuse
By too much good advice,
But poorly given: 
That no one follows, because, forsooth,
’Tis thrown at him, neck and heels. 
The drama, pure and simple, is forgot
In tugging in the moral’”?

“I thought you were going to alter ‘tugging in’ to something more elegant,” said Polly.

“Lugging in,” suggested Clare, with another laugh.

“Morals are always tugged in by the head and shoulders,” said Jasper.  “Why not say so?”

“We should have pretty much the whole anatomy of the human form divine, if you had your way,” cried Clare.  “Listen!

“’Because, forsooth, ‘tis thrown at him, neck and heels’ and ’Tugging in the moral, head and shoulders.’  Now just add ’by the pricking of my thumbs,’ etc., and you have them all.”

Jasper joined as well as Polly and Ben in the laugh at the prologue’s expense, but Phronsie sat erect winking hard, her royal hands folded quite still in her lap.

“You’re bound for a newspaper office, my boy,” said Jasper at length.  “How you will cut into the coming poet, and maul the fledgling of the prose writer!  Well, I stand corrected.