wriggling awkwardly along the floor, the royal countenance clouded over.

"I ought to have been told of this. It is terrible--terrible! And for a
prince too. Send for all the doctors in my kingdom immediately."

They came, and each gave a different opinion and ordered a different
mode of treatment. The only thing they agreed in was what had been
pretty well known before, that the Prince must have been hurt when he
was an infant--let fall, perhaps, so as to injure his spine and lower
limbs. Did nobody remember?

No, nobody. Indignantly, all the nurses denied that any such accident
had happened, was possible to have happened, until the faithful
country nurse recollected that it really had happened on the day of the
christening. For which unluckily good memory all the others scolded her
so severely that she had no peace of her life, and soon after, by the
influence of the young lady nurse who had carried the baby that fatal
day, and who was a sort of connection of the Crown-Prince--being his
wife's second cousin once removed--the poor woman was pensioned off and
sent to the Beautiful Mountains from whence she came, with orders to
remain there for the rest of her days.

But of all this the King knew nothing, for, indeed, after the first
shock of finding out that his son could not walk, and seemed never
likely to he interfered very little concerning him. The whole thing was
too painful, and his Majesty never liked painful things. Sometimes he
inquired after Prince Dolor, and they told him his Royal Highness was
going on as well as could be expected, which really was the case. For,
after worrying the poor child and perplexing themselves with one remedy
after another, the Crown-Prince, not wishing to offend any of the