Prince Vance: The Story of a Prince with a Court in His Box. Putnam Eleanor
and for one so young his Highness had known a great many wizards; he almost always met more or less of them when he played truant by climbing out of a back window and going into the woods fishing – he thought the Blue Wizard was the most amusing and had invented the very drollest trick.
"Dear me, your Highness!" said the poor tutor, in so tiny a voice that it was quite all the Prince could do to hear him. "Dear me! what is the matter? I certainly feel very queer; I do, indeed."
"You look even queerer than you feel, I fancy," replied the naughty Prince, chuckling with glee.
He picked up the poor tutor, and putting him on the window-sill laughed at him till his sides were fairly sore. Then he began to consider how he could get the most fun and make the most mischief out of his bonbons, for there were not a great many of them; and, being a shrewd young rascal, he at last contrived the plan of putting them into the ice-cream which was then being frozen for the royal dinner. Then everybody would be sure to get a taste at least of the magic potion; and slipping down into the kitchen, the wicked young Prince succeeded in carrying out this evil and dangerous plan.
III
Everybody looked at the Prince when at dinner he declined ice-cream. It was unheard of. Nobody had ever known him to do such a thing before. The twelve young Princesses, though much too well bred to remark upon it, stared at their brother with their twenty-four beady blue eyes, and made their twelve little mouths as round as penny pieces in their surprise.
Now the King, being fond of ice-cream, happened to eat quite steadily for some moments without stopping; so that when he did look up he beheld his Queen already shrunk to the size of a teaspoon, and every moment growing smaller.
"My dear," said he, gravely, "really I don't think you ought, – before the children too; just consider what a bad example you are setting them."
"I'm sure, Sire," replied the Queen, rather crossly, for the sudden shrinking had given her quite a giddy feeling, – "I'm sure I cannot imagine what you are talking about. Bad example, indeed! You had better be looking to your own behavior. What the children will think of you for growing so very small, I'm sure I cannot imagine."
At this moment the royal pair looked about on their daughters. They were about the size of lucifer matches! They ran their eyes down the long table; every person there was a pygmy.
Horror and fear filled every mind save that of Prince Vance. He nearly went wild with joy over the great success of his trick. He had, it is true, run out of the dining-hall at first, from his old habit of starting off whenever he had performed any of his abominable jokes; but he soon ventured to come back again, and round and round the table he went, laughing as if he would kill himself at the tiny people sprawling helplessly in their big chairs.
The Prince helped himself to fruit and cakes and bonbons from the table. He seated his royal mother on top of the sugar-bowl, and put the poor old King in the salt-cellar. As for the Lord Chancellor, whom he especially hated, Vance dumped the bewigged old fop into the pepper-box, where he would really have sneezed himself to death in another minute, had not the Blue Wizard fortunately appeared and given the unhappy man a sudden bath in a finger-bowl.
"It worked well, didn't it?" the Blue Wizard observed with a grin, as he put the Lord Chancellor, very white and limp, on the window-seat to dry in the sun.
"Oh, awfully well!" Vance replied briskly, although secretly he was more than a little afraid of this particular wizard, who seemed to be much more sudden in his way of appearing and disappearing than the common sort of wizards to which the Prince was accustomed.
"The worst of it is," remarked the Wizard, thoughtfully, pulling his bushy eyebrows with his long blue fingers, "you can't change 'em back."
"What!" exclaimed the Prince, in his confusion dropping his father into the pudding sauce and entirely ruining the royal robes. "Can't change them back? But you must change them back if I tell you to."
"Oh, as to that," the Blue Wizard answered carelessly, giving the king in turn a bath in the finger-bowl, "what you say isn't of the least consequence any way. In the first place, no wizard is bound to obey anybody who does not himself know how to obey; and in the second place, nobody can undo this particular charm but the Crushed Strawberry Wizard."
"Very well, then," said Vance, imperiously, paying no attention whatever to the first part of the Blue Wizard's remark; "go and get the Crushed Strawberry Wizard."
"Get him yourself!" was the answer. "I don't want him. It is nothing to me, you know; this isn't my family."
"But where does the Crushed Strawberry Wizard live?" asked the Prince, more humbly.
"I'm sure I've no idea," the Blue Wizard replied lightly; "and now I think of it, I don't believe I care. I'm sure I don't see why I should."
"But it's all your fault," blubbered Vance, beginning to cry, and sitting down upon his uncle, the Duke Ogee, without even noticing him till the Duke wriggled so that Vance jumped up in a fright, thinking he had sat down upon a frog. "I'm sure you got me into the scrape."
"Now you're getting tiresome," said the Wizard, yawning. "I never liked tiresome people myself."
"But I don't know what to do-oo!" sobbed the Prince.
At this the Wizard only gave a terrible laugh and vanished quite away again, leaving the naughty young Prince to get out of his trouble as best he could.
IV
For a few moments Prince Vance continued to cry rather noisily, though it must be confessed that it was more because he was so vexed at the Blue Wizard than because he was at all sorry for what he had done. Indeed, he did not even now realize that the trick was likely to turn out a very serious thing; and after a while he dried his eyes, and having collected his wits proceeded to collect also all the little people and put them together at one end of the royal dining-table.
They made such a pretty sight, with their little court robes and tiny jewels, that Vance was charmed with them and declared them to be more interesting than white mice or even guinea pigs. He could hear them, too, if he listened very closely indeed, quarrelling and blaming one another for what had befallen them; and this was so vastly funny to the wicked Prince that he rubbed his hands and fairly danced again with glee. It was only when the palace cat, pouncing upon the Lord Chancellor as he lay upon the window-sill, snatched him and carried him off in her mouth, that Vance began to be a little frightened, and to realize that, having made the whole family unable to protect themselves, it had now become his duty to care for them and see that they came to no harm. He just managed to save the Lord Chancellor from the lantern jaws of the royal cat, and then proceeded at once to set his small family in safe places for the night. Some he put in the crystal lily-cups of the chandeliers; others in the crannies of the golden mouldings on the wall; while for the King and Queen and the twelve little Princesses, he found a lovely chamber in a pink porcelain shell which hung from the ceiling by silver chains, and was commonly used for the burning of perfumes and spices to make the air of the dining-hall sweet and delightful. All this being attended to, the Prince betook himself to bed; but the palace seemed very lonely and silent, and the Prince was so dull and so frightened that he might not have gone to sleep at all, save for the cheering thought that at least there was no danger of lessons on the morrow, as the tutor was too small to teach, and his father and mother far too little to make him obey.
"I will go to the preserve closets," he murmured to himself as he was dropping off to sleep. "There is now nobody to stop me. I shall begin with the damsons and the honey in the morning, and I shall have all the wedding cake and macaroons that I can possibly eat."
But, alas for the Prince! when morning came he found that affairs were turning out differently indeed from the way in which he had planned. When he came down to breakfast, with his foolish head full of visions of ordering the cook to send up pigeon pot-pie, curry of larks, strong coffee, – which was a forbidden delight to the Prince except upon his birthdays, – and unlimited buttered toast and jam, what a downfall to all his hopes was it to find, pacing the dining-hall, the fierce and cruel General Bopi, who, luckily for himself, had been out hunting the day before, and so missed the fatal dinner, and was still quite as large as life if not larger. He had discovered the