But
she was not the ordinary Princess. She would not behave as a
Princess should. I could not help it. The others heard only my
voice, but I was listening to the wind. She thought she loved the
Prince--until he had wounded the Dragon unto death and had carried
her away into the wood. Then, while the Prince lay sleeping, she
heard the Dragon calling to her in its pain, and crept back to where
it lay bleeding, and put her arms about its scaly neck and kissed it;
and that healed it. I was hoping myself that at this point it would
turn into a prince itself, but it didn't; it just remained a dragon--
so the wind said. Yet the Princess loved it: it wasn't half a bad
dragon, when you knew it. I could not tell them what became of the
Prince: the wind didn't seem to care a hang about the Prince.
Myself, I liked the story, but Hocker, who was a Fifth Form boy,
voicing our little public, said it was rot, so far, and that I had
got to hurry up and finish things rightly.
"But that is all," I told them.
"No, it isn't," said Hocker. "She's got to marry the Prince in the
end. He'll have to kill the Dragon again; and mind he does it
properly this time. Whoever heard of a Princess leaving a Prince for
a Dragon!"
"But she wasn't the ordinary sort of Princess," I argued.
"Then she's got to be," criticised Hocker. "Don't you give yourself
so many airs. You make her marry the Prince, and be slippy about it.
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