daughter's was, golden as morning. But it was not this reflection on
his hair that troubled him; it was the double use of the word _light_.
For the king hated all witticisms, and punning especially. And
besides he could not tell whether the queen meant light-_haired_ or
light-_heired_; for why might she not aspirate her vowels when she was
ex-asperated herself?"

"Now, really," interrupted the clergyman, "I must protest. Mr. Smith,
you bury us under an avalanche of puns, and, I must say, not very good
ones. Now, the story, though humorous, is not of the kind to admit of
such fanciful embellishment. It reminds one rather of a burlesque at a
theatre--the lowest thing, from a literary point of view, to be
found."

"I submit," was all I could answer; for I feared that he was right.
The passage, as it now stands, is not nearly so bad as it was then,
though, I confess, it is still bad enough.

"I think," said Mrs. Armstrong, "since criticism is the order of the
evening, and Mr. Smith is so kind as not to mind it, that he makes the
king and queen too silly. It takes away from the reality."

"Right too, my dear madam," I answered.

"The reality of a fairy-tale?" said Mrs. Cathcart, as if asking a
question of herself.

"But will you grant me the justice," said I, "to temper your judgments
of me, if not of my story, by remembering that this is the first thing
of the sort I ever attempted?"