t the
Princess was still the girl, just the same. He loved her, and he wanted
her to be his wife; so for a little--for a very little--he was wild
enough to think that he might work and study and do great things in the
world until he was even a Prince himself, and then he could marry the
Princess."

"Well, couldn't he?"

"No. To begin with, he lost his health. Then, away back in the little
house on the hill something happened--a something that left a very
precious charge for him to keep; and he had to go back and keep it, and
to try to see if he couldn't find that lost health, as well. And that
is all."

"All! You don't mean that that is the end!" exclaimed Jill.

"That's the end."

"But that isn't a mite of a nice end," complained David. "They always
get married and live happy ever after--in stories."

"Do they?" Mr. Jack smiled a little sadly. "Perhaps they do, David,--in
stories."

"Well, can't they in this one?"

"I don't see how."

"Why can't he go to her and ask her to marry him?"

Mr. Jack drew himself up proudly.

"The Pauper and the Princess? Never! Paupers don't go to Princesses,
David, and say, 'I love you.'"

David frowned.

"Why not? I don't see why--if they want to do it. Seems as if somehow
it might be fixed."

"It can't be," returned Mr. Jack, his gaze on the towers that crowned
the opposite hill; "not so long as always before the Pauper's eyes
there are those gray walls behind which he pictures the Princess in the
midst of her golden luxury."

To neither David nor Jill did the change to the present tense seem
strange. The story was much too real to them for that.

"Well, anyhow, I think it ought to be fixed," declared David, as he
rose to his feet.

"So do I--but we can't fix it," laughed Jill. "And I'm hungry. Let's
see what there is to eat!"

CHAPTER XVIII

DAVID TO THE RESCUE

It was a beautiful moonlight night, but for once David was not thinking
of the moon. All the way to the Holly farmhouse he was thinking of Mr.
Jack's story, "The Princess and the Pauper." It held him strangely. He
felt that he never could forget it. For some reason that he could not
have explained, it made him sad, too, and his step was very quiet as he
went up the walk toward the kitchen door.

It was after eight o'clock. David had taken supper with Mr. Jack and
Jill, and not for some hours had he been at the farmhouse. In the
doorway now he stopped short; then instinctively he stepped back in