he first opportunity to interrupt them. 'What's going to
happen to-morrow, Dr. Hurst?' she demanded. 'Are you going to carry off
the princess at last?'

'I--I don't think so,' said Dr. Hurst, sitting down beside her.

'Why don't you?' demanded the child.

'Well,' said Dr. Hurst, smiling, 'I don't know whether the princess is
ready to be carried off. Are you so anxious to get rid of her?'

Both he and Jill were used by this time to her fancy for weaving the
people she liked best into a fairy tale. But Jill was not smiling so
much as usual this morning.

'I don't want to be carried off by anybody, thank you, Babs,' she said
demurely.

'Oh, that doesn't make any difference,' Babs assured her. 'If you're a
princess, you just have to be carried off whether you like it or not.'

'Then I'll be a new kind of princess, and refuse to have anything to do
with the prince when he comes. Shall I, Babs?' suggested Jill, lightly.

Barbara looked at her doubtfully. Jill's idea was not like anything she
had ever read in a fairy tale, and she did not think much of it.

'You see, you're _not_ a new kind of princess,' she answered simply. And
the Doctor looked amused; but Jill hurried away to the other end of the
room and began talking about temperatures.

The giant must have been very busy all that day, for he did not come
near the invalid's room till just before supper. Kit came, and so did the
other boys, but they only said vaguely that Peter was in the barn; and
when he ran in at last to say good-night to her, she knew it was no use
trying to find out what his plans were for locking up the princess. For
Peter did not know that he was a giant, and he did not know that Jill was
a princess; and it was better to go on with the story in her own way than
to provoke Peter's great laugh by telling him about it. So she went to
sleep and dreamed of the dear old magician, who had been away from her
kingdom for four whole months, and was going to be away for two months
more; and in her dream he came back and rescued the princess himself,
and turned the beast into a prince for her. But that was only a dream,
and in the morning the end of the story seemed further off than ever.

'Do let me see what you have been writing, Peter,' she shouted through
her open window, just before lunch-time. Peter and Wilfred had been more
than an hour composing a letter on the lawn below, with Robin jumping
round them all the time, jogging their elbows and o