at her.
“Yes?” Now she was even more flustered and confused.
“If I have your leave to go, Your Highness …?”
“What? Oh! Of course.” She nodded her head and then, feeling foolish, made her escape. “Good-bye!” She walked quickly down the path that led to the palace.
After he was out of sight, she slowed down a little. The princesses did not require people to ask permission to leave; it was more the king’s prerogative.
“But where did he learn such nice manners?” she wondered aloud.
“What did you say, Rose?” Lily came around a hedge and stared at her. “Why are you all wet?”
“I’m not
all
wet,” Rose said irritably. “I’m
partly
wet. I fell in the fountain. The swan fountain. A gardener had to fish me out and… what are you doing?”
Lily was holding a basket full of handkerchiefs. Rose looked around and realized that they were at the entrance to the hedge maze. A chill breeze came rushing around them, rattling the autumn-dry hedge and making her shiver.
“Oh, it’s the younger set.” That was how the three youngest sisters—Orchid, Pansy, and Petunia—were referred to by the others. Rose, Lily, and Jonquil were the “older set,” and the six in the middle were “in-betweeners.” “They wanted to play Hansel and Gretel, so I’m leaving a trail of handkerchiefs for them. Except the handkerchiefs keep blowing away.”
“We wanted to use white rocks,” Orchid chimed in, poppingaround the corner and startling Rose. “But Lily said that Master Orm would be angry if we rearranged his rocks. Do you think that he would? And aren’t they Papa’s rocks anyhow?”
“They wanted to use the pebbles from the main path,” Lily explained. “I was mostly worried that the rocks would chip the blades of the grass clippers, when they trim the lawn next.”
“A good idea,” Rose said, and then sneezed. “Oh dear, I’d best get inside.”
“Why are you all wet?” Orchid blinked up at her owlishly.
“I’m not all wet,” Rose said again. “I put my arm in a fountain.”
“And your head and your other arm and your shawl,” Orchid pointed out. “Which fountain was it? Was the water very cold?”
“The swan fountain, and yes it was,” Rose answered her. “Now why don’t we all go inside? It’s too chilly to play out here.”
“Yes,
Mother.”
Orchid rolled her eyes.
Rose didn’t bother to reply. Being called “Mother” on top of being cold, and wet, and upset about well, everything, had set her temper on the boil. She stamped off to the palace with her dripping shawl hanging from her arms. She passed Lilac and the twins, Poppy and Daisy, on her way to the room she shared with Lily and Jonquil. All three opened their mouths to say something but closed them again when they got a good look at Rose’s face.
Rose stalked into her room and slammed the door.
Jonquil was brushing her hair in front of the big looking glass above their dressing table. “Can I borrow your blue shawl? Violet and Iris say that the new under-gardener is handsome and I want to go see for myself.”
Rose threw her sopping shawl at Jonquil and climbed into bed, wet clothes and all.
Ill
By the time the dinner gong struck, Rose was running a temperature. She lay in her bed, miserable, and coughed into a handkerchief. Lily had seen Rose’s wet hair and gown sticking out of the covers, summoned a maid, and forcibly gotten her older sister dried off and into a nightgown. Rose barely noticed.
The shoemaker had brought new dancing slippers, since he knew all their sizes by heart, but she hadn’t tried hers on or even looked at them. The poor man was anxious to please—the princesses were his best customers, after all—so Lily assured him on Rose’s behalf that the workmanship was once more unsurpassed.
Jonquil, having readily forgiven her older sister for the wet shawl incident, described the slippers to Rose in detail and then picked out a yellow gown for her to wear to supper. “This