the name die with you. The young Princess is--"

"Is fifteen you say," he interrupted loftily. "Come around in ten
years and we'll talk it over again. But I'm not going to pledge
myself to marry a child in short frocks, name or no name. Is she
pretty?"

The lords did not know. They had not seen the young lady.

"If she is pretty you'd be sure to know it, my lords, so we'll assume
she isn't. I saw her when she was three years old, and she certainly
was a fright when she cried, and, my lords, she cried all the time.
No, I'll not marry her. Be good enough to say to the Prince of
Dawsbergen that I'm very much obliged to him, but it's quite out of
the question."

And the fifteen-year-old Crown Princess, four hundred miles away,
coolly informed her doting parents that she was tired of being a
Princess anyway and very much preferred marrying some one who lived
in a cottage. In fine, she stamped her little foot and said she'd
jump into the river before she'd marry the Prince of Graustark.

"But he's a very handsome, adorable boy," began her mother.

"And half-American just as you are, my child," put in her father
encouragingly. "Nothing could be more suitable than--"

"I don't intend to marry anybody until I'm thirty at least, so that
ends it, daddy,--I mean, your poor old highness."