_Nurse:_ Ah, you will not be saying that the time Mr. Right will come down the chimney, and will give you the marks and tokens of a king.

_Queen:_ There might have some come looking for her before this, if it was not for you petting and pampering her the way you do, and encouraging her flightiness and follies. It is likely she will get no offers till such time as I will have taught her the manners and the right customs of courts.

_Nurse:_ Sure I am acquainted with courts myself.

Wasn't it I fostered comely Ma.n.u.s that is presently King of Sorcha, since his father went out of the world? And as to lovers coming to look for her!

They do be coming up to this as plenty as the eye could hold them, and she refusing them, and they laying the blame upon the King!

_King:_ That is so, they laying the blame upon myself. There was the uncle of the King of Leinster; he never sent me another car-load of asparagus from the time you banished him away.

_Princess:_ He was a widower man.

_King:_ As to the heir of Orkney, since the time you sent him to the right about, I never got so much as a conger eel from his hand.

_Princess:_ As dull as a fish he was. He had a fish's eyes.

_King:_ That wasn't so with the champion of the merings of Ulster.

_Princess:_ A freckled man. He had hair the colour of a fox.

_King:_ I wish he didn't stop sending me his tribute of heather beer.

_Queen:_ It is a poor daughter that will not wish to be helpful to her father.

_Princess:_ If I am to wed for the furnishing of my father's table, it's as good for you to wrap me in a speckled fawnskin and roast me!

_(Runs out, tossing her ball_.)

_Queen:_ She is no way fit for marriage unless with a herd to the birds of the air, till she has a couple of years schooling.

_King:_ It would be hard to put her back to that.

_Queen:_ I must take it in hand. She is getting entirely too much of her own way.

_Nurse:_ Leave her alone, and in the end it will be a good way.

_Queen:_ To keep rules and hours she must learn, and to give in to order and good sense. _(To King.)_ There is a pigeon messenger I brought from Alban I am about to let loose on this day with news of myself and of yourself. I will send with it a message to a friend I have, bidding her to make ready for Nuala a place in her garden of learning and her school.

_King:_ That is going too fast. There is no hurry.

_Queen:_ She is seventeen years. There is no day to be lost. I will go write the letter.

_Nurse:_ Oh, you wouldn't send away the poor child!

_Dall Glic:_ It would be a great hardship to send her so far. Our poor little Princess Nu!

_Queen: (Sharply.)_ What are saying? _(Dall Glic is silent.)_

_King:_ I would not wish her to be sent out of this.

_Queen:_ There is no other way to set her mind to sense and learning. It will be for her own good.

_Nurse:_ Where's the use troubling her with lessons and with books that maybe she will never be in need of at all. Speak up for her, King.

_King:_ Let her stop for this year as she is.

_Queen:_ You are all too soft and too easy. She will turn on you and will blame you for it, and another year or two years slipped by.

_Nurse:_ That she may!

_Dall Glic:_ Who knows what might take place within the twelvemonth that is coming?

_King:_ Ah, don't be talking about it. Maybe it never might come to pa.s.s.

_Dall Glic_: It will come to pa.s.s, if there is truth in the clouds of sky.

_King_: It will not be for a year, anyway. There'll be many an ebbing and flowing of the tide within a year.

_Queen_: What at all are you talking about?

_King_: Ah, where's the use of talking too much.

_Queen_: Making riddles you are, and striving to keep the meaning from your comrade, that is myself.

_King_: It's best not be thinking about the thing you would not wish, and maybe it might never come around at all. To strive to forget a threat yourself, it might maybe be forgotten by the universe.

_Queen_: Is it true something was threatened?

_King_: How would I know is anything true, and the world so full of lies as it is?

_Nurse_: That is so. He might have been wrong in his foretelling. What is he in the finish but an old prophecy?

_Dall Glic_: Is it of Fintan you are saying that?

_Queen_: And who, will you tell me, is Fintan?

_Dall Glic_: Anyone that never heard tell of Fintan never heard anything at all.

_Queen_: His name was not up on the tablets of big men at the King of Alban's Court, or of Britain.

_Nurse_: Ah, sure in those countries they are without religion or belief.

_Queen_: Is it that there was a prophecy?

_King_: Don't mind it. What are prophecies?

Don't we hear them every day of the week? And if one comes true there may be seven blind and come to nothing.

_Queen: (To Dall Glic_). I must get to the root of this, and the handle. Who, now, is Fintan?

_Dall Glic:_ He is an astrologer, and understanding the nature of the stars.