One morning when the papa was on a visit to the grandfather, the nephew and the niece came rushing into his room and got into bed with him. He pretended to be asleep, and even when they grabbed hold of him and shook him, he just let his teeth clatter, and made no sign of waking up. But they knew he was fooling, and they kept shaking him till he opened his eyes and looked round, and said, "Oh, oh! where am I?" as if he were all bewildered.
"You're in bed with us!" they shouted; and they acted as if they were afraid he would try to get away from them by the way they held on to his arms.
But he lay quite still, and he only said, "I should say you were in bed with me. It seems to be my bed."
"It's the same thing!" said the nephew.
"How do you make that out?" asked the papa. "It's the same thing if it's enchantment. But if it isn't, it isn't."
The niece said, "What enchantment?" for she thought that would be a pretty good chance to get what they had come for.
She was perfectly delighted, and gave a joyful thrill all over when the papa said, "Oh, that's a long story."
"Well, the longer the better, I should say; shouldn't you, brother?"
she returned.
The nephew hemmed twice in his throat, and asked, drowsily, "Is it a little-pig story, or a fairy-prince story?" for he had heard from his cousins that their papa would tell you a little-pig story if he got the chance; and you had to look out and ask him which it was going to be beforehand.
"Well, I can't tell," said the papa. "It's a fairy-prince story to begin with, but it may turn out a little-pig story before it gets to the end.
It depends upon how the Prince behaves. But I'm not anxious to tell it," and the papa put his face into the pillow and pretended to fall instantly asleep again.
"Now, brother, you see!" said the niece. "Being so particular!"
"Well, sister," said the nephew, "it wasn't my fault. I had to ask him. You know what they said."
"Well, I suppose we've got to wake him up all over again," said the niece, with a little sigh; and they began to pull at the papa this way and that, but they could not budge him. As soon as they stopped, he opened his eyes.
"Now don't say, 'Where am I?'" said the niece.
The papa could not help laughing, because that was just the very thing he was going to say. "Well, all right! What about that story? Do you want to hear it, and take your chances of its being a Prince to the end?"
"I suppose we'll have to; won't we, sister?"
"Yes, we'll leave it all to you, uncle," said the niece; and she thought she would coax him up a little, and so she went on: "I know you won't be mean about it. Will he, brother?"
"No," said the nephew. "I'll bet the Prince will keep a Prince all the way through. What'll you bet, sister?"
"I won't bet anything," said the niece, and she put her arm round the papa's neck, and pressed her cheek up against his. "I'll just leave it to uncle, and if it does turn into a little-pig story, it'll be for the moral."
The nephew was not quite sure what a moral was; but at the bottom of his heart he would just as soon have it a little-pig story as not. He had got to thinking how funny a little pig would look in a Prince's clothes, and he said, "Yes, it'll be for the moral."
The papa was very contrary that morning. "Well," said he, "I don't know about that. I'm not sure there's going to be any moral."
"Oh, goody!" said the niece, and she clapped her hands in great delight.
"Then it's going to be a Prince story all through!"
"If you interrupt me in that way, it's not going to be any story at all."
"I didn't know you had begun it, uncle," pleaded the niece.
"Well, I hadn't. But I was just going to." The papa lay quiet a while.
The fact is, he had not thought up any story at all; and he was so tired of all the stories he used to tell his own children that he could not bear to tell one of them, though he knew very well that the niece and nephew would be just as glad of it as if it were new, and maybe gladder; for they had heard a great deal about these stories, how perfectly splendid they were like the Pumpkin-Glory, and the Little Pig that took the Poison Pills, and the Proud Little Horse-car that fell in Love with the Pullman Sleeper, and Jap Doll Hopsing's Adventures in Crossing the Continent, and the Enchantment of the Greedy Travellers, and the Little Boy whose Legs turned into Bicycle Wheels. At last the papa said, "This is a very peculiar kind of a story. It's about a Prince and a Princess."
"Oh!" went both of the children; and then they stopped themselves, and stuffed the covering into their mouths.
The papa lifted himself on his elbow and stared severely at them, first at one, and then at the other. "Have you finished?" he asked, as if they had interrupted him; but he really wanted to gain time, so as to think up a story of some kind. The children were afraid to say anything, and the papa went on with freezing politeness: "Because if you have, I might like to say something myself. This story is about a Prince and a Princess, but the thing of it is that they had names almost exactly alike. They were twins; the Prince was a boy and the Princess was a girl; that was a point that their fairy godmother carried against the wicked enchantress who tried to have it just the other way; but it made the wicked enchantress so mad that the fairy godmother had to give in to her a little, and let them be named almost exactly alike."
Here the papa stopped, and after waiting for him to go on, the nephew ventured to ask, very respectfully indeed, "Would you mind telling us what their names were, uncle?"
The papa rubbed his forehead. "I have such a bad memory for names. Hold on! Wait a minute! I remember now! Their names were Butterflyflutterby and Flutterbybutterfly." Of course he had just thought up the names.
"And which was which, uncle dear?" asked the niece, not only very respectfully, but very affectionately, too; she was so afraid he would get mad again, and stop altogether.
"Why, I should think you would know a girl's name when you heard it.
Butterflyflutterby was the Prince and Flutterbybutterfly was the Princess."
"I don't see how we're ever going to keep them apart," sighed the niece.
"You've got to keep them apart," said the papa. "Because it's the great thing about the story that if you can't remember which is the Prince and which is the Princess whenever I ask you, the story has to stop. It can't help it, and I can't help it."
They knew he was just setting a trap for them, and the same thought struck them both at once. They rose up and leaned over the papa, with their arms across and their fluffy heads together in the form of a capital letter A, and whispered in each other's ears, "You say it's one, and I'll say it's the other, and then we'll have it right between us."
They dropped back and pulled the covering up to their chins, and shouted, "Don't you tell! don't you tell!" and just perfectly wriggled with triumph.
The papa had heard every word; they were laughing so that they whispered almost as loud as talking; but he pretended that he had not understood, and he made up his mind that he would have them yet. "A little and a more," he said, "and I should never have gone on again."
"Go on! Go on!" they called out, and then they wriggled and giggled till anybody would have thought they were both crazy.
"Well, where was I?" This was another of the papa's tricks to gain time.
Whenever he could not think of anything more, he always asked, "Well, where was I?" He now added: "Oh yes! I remember! Well, once there were a Prince and a Princess, and their names were Butterflyflutterby and Flutterbybutterfly; and they were both twins, and both orphans; but they made their home with their fairy godmother as long as they were little, and they used to help her about the house for part board, and she helped them about their kingdom, and kept it in good order for them, and left them plenty of time to play and enjoy themselves. She was the greatest person for order there ever was; and if she found a speck of dust or dirt on the kingdom anywhere, she would have out the whole army and make them wash it up, and then sand-paper the place, and polish it with a coarse towel till it perfectly glistened. The father of the Prince and Princess had taken the precaution, before he died, to subdue all his enemies; and the consequence was that the longest kind of peace had set in, and the army had nothing to do but keep the kingdom clean. That was the reason why the fairy godmother had made the General-in-Chief take their guns away, and arm them with long feather-dusters. They marched with the poles on their shoulders, and carried the dusters in their belts, like bayonets; and whenever they came to a place that the fairy godmother said needed dusting she always went along with them in a diamond chariot she made the General halloo out: 'Fix dusters! Make ready! Aim! Dust!' And then the place would be cleaned up. But the General-in-Chief used to go out behind the church and cry, it mortified him so to have to give such orders, and it reminded him so painfully of the good old times when he would order his men to charge the enemy, and cover the field with gore and blood, instead of having it so awfully spick-and-span as it was now. Still he did what the fairy godmother told him, because he said it was his duty; and he kept his troops supplied with sudsine and dustene, to clean up with, and brushes and towels. The fairy godmother "