"Friends," he said, "you have taught me many things in these weeks that
you have dwelt under this roof. You have cured me; you have made me
laugh. I have been thinking much of late how it is that where you come
folk are happy. Your faces make the world smile. How different from
my father and me! We have always made every one weep. There has been
something wrong, I know not what. No one loves us,--not even Clare
here."

"O brother!" protested the little maid, "I have always loved you. But
never so dearly as now, when you have grown so kind."

John spoke gently. "You will change all this when you are king," he
said.

The Prince shook his head. "No, they will never love me as they do
you. I would fain be different, but I can never be like you, John.
You should be king, not I."

John laughed. "And what would become of the Animal Kingdom then?" he
said. "My father and I have been talking together. We must soon go
back to our woods and our little friends there."

"Oh, you must not go!" gasped the Prince, turning pale. "You must
never leave me! I can never again be alone with the King!"

He looked so terror-stricken that the Hermit and John were silent for
pity.

"I have been thinking," went on the Prince gravely, "that when I am
king, if that time ever comes,--and they say that it must, since there