_Nurse:_ He wore out in his lifetime three eagles and three palm trees and three earthen d.y.k.es.

It is down in a cleft of the rocks beyond he has his dwelling presently, the way he can be watching the stars through the daytime.

_Dall Glic:_ He prophesied in a prophecy, and it is written in clean letters in the King's yew-tree box.

_King:_ It is best to keep it out of sight. It being to be, it will be; and, if not, where's the use troubling our mind?

_Queen:_ Sound it out to me.

_Dall Glic: (Looking from window and drawing curtain.)_ There is no story in the world is worse to me or more pitiful; I wouldn't wish any person to hear.

_Nurse:_ Oh, take care it would come to the ears of my darling Nu!

_Dall Glic:_ It is said by himself and the heavens that in a year from this day the King's daughter will be brought away and devoured by a scaly Green Dragon that will come from the North of the World.

_Queen:_ A Dragon! I thought you were talking of some danger. I wouldn't give in to dragons.

I never saw one. I'm not in dread of beasts unless it might be a mouse in the night-time!

_King:_ Put it out of mind. It is likely anyway that the world will soon be ended the way it is.

_Queen: I_ will send and search out this astrologer and will question him.

_Dall Glic_: You have not far to search. He is outside at the kitchen door at this minute, and as if questioning after something, and it a half-score and seven years since I knew him to come out of his cave.

_King_: Do not! He might waken up the Dragon and put him in mind of the girl, for to make his own foretelling come true.

_Nurse_: Ah, such a thing cannot be! The poor innocent child! _(Weeps.)_

_Queen_: Where's the use of crying and roaring?

The thing must be stopped and put an end to.

I don't say I give in to your story, but that would be an unnatural death. I would be scandalised being stepmother to a girl that would be swallowed by a sea-serpent!

_Nurse_: Ochone! Don't be talking of it at all!

_Queen_: At the King of Alban's Court, one of the royal family to die over, it will be naturally on a pillow, and the dead-bells ringing, and a burying with white candles, and c.r.a.pe on the knocker of the door, and a flagstone put over the grave. What way could we put a stone or so much as a rose-bush over Nuala and she in the inside of a water-worm might be ploughing its way down to the north of the world?

_Nurse_: Och! that is what is killing me entirely!

O save her, save her.

_King_: I tell you, it being to be, it will be.

_Queen_: You may be right, so, when you would not go to the expense of paying her charges at the Royal school. But wait, now, there is a plan coming into my mind.

_Nurse_: There must surely be some way!

_Queen_: It is likely a king's daughter the beast--if there is a beast--will come questing after, and not after a king's wife.

_Dall Glic_: That is according to custom.

_Queen_: That's what I am saying. What we have to do is to join Nuala with a man of a husband, and she will be safe from the danger ahead of her.

In all the inventions made by poets, for to put terror on children or to knock laughter out of fools, did any of you ever hear of a Dragon swallowing the wedding ring?

_All_: We never did.

_Queen_: It's easy enough so. There must be no delay till Nuala will be married and wed with someone that will bring her away out of this, and let the Dragon go hungry home!

_Nurse_: That she may! Isn't it a pity now she being so hard to please!

_Queen_: Young people are apt to be selfish and to have no thought but for themselves. She must not be hard to please when it will be to save and to serve her family and to keep up respect for their name. Here she is coming.

_Nurse_: Ah, you would not tell her! You would not put the dear child under the shadow of such a terror and such a threat!

_King_: She must not be told. I never could bear up against it.

_(Nuala comes in_.)

_Queen:_ Look now at your father the way he is.

_Princess: (Touching his hand.)_ What is fretting you?

_Queen:_ His heart as weighty as that the chair near broke under him.

_Princess:_ I never saw you this way before.

_Queen:_ And all on the head of yourself!

_Princess:_ I am sorry, and very sorry, for that.

_Queen:_ He is loth to say it to you, but he is tired and wore out waiting for you to settle with some match. See what a troubled look he has on his face.

_Princess: (To King.)_ Is it that you want me to leave you? _(He gives a sob.) (To Dall Glic.)_ Is it the Queen urged him to this?

_Dall Glic:_ If she did, it was surely for your good.

_Nurse:_ Oh, my child and my darling, let you strive to take a liking to some good man that will come!

_Princess:_ Are you going against me with the rest?

_Nurse:_ You know well I would never do that!

_Princess:_ Do you, father, urge me to go?

_King:_ They are in too big a hurry why wouldn't they wait a while, for a quarter, or three-quarters of a year.

_Princess:_ Is that all the delay I am given, and the term is set for me, like a servant that would be banished from the house?

_King:_ That's not it. That's not right. I would never give in to let you go ...if it wasn't ...

_Princess_: I know. _(Stands up.)_ For my own good!