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named Fred, had given her his apple. She had never eaten a whole one before, because at the castle apples were always served peeled and sliced and arranged on a porcelain plate.
    "How primitive this is!" the princess said in delight as she bit through the skin, following the example of the others. "How peasant-y!"
    "What?" Fred asked.
    "I just meant blimey, what a good-tasting apple!" the princess explained, and dabbed some juice from her chin.
    "Aye. I'll bring you another tomorrow. I got a whole apple tree by my house."
    And he had. She thanked him for it and added it to the lunch she had brought today, her own castle breakfast wrapped in a napkin.
    "What you got there?" one girl, Nell, asked, staring at her lunch.
    "It's toast. Just bread, same as you, but toasted over a fire."
    "And cut in fancy pieces!" Nell pointed out, laughing. She called the other girls to see—"Looky what Pat's got here in her lunch!"—and they all giggled. The princess, looking at her own cold toast, realized that peasant bread would not be cut into neat triangles as this was. She had so much to learn about being humble and poor.
    "I just did it to be silly and foolish," she explained, and laughed with them, at the same time hiding the crisp bacon under her napkin.
    "Where be your lard?" Nell asked.
    "Lard?"
    "Your pig fat, to rub on the bread. Blimey, I got lots! Want some of mine?"
    The princess looked with horror at the glistening thick glob of white fat that Nell graciously offered.
    "Thank you," she said, "but, ah, my belly's full. Just room for apple." She folded her napkin around the toast and bacon, bit into the bright red apple skin, and was relieved to see the lard disappear back into Nell's lunch.
    "Pat!" The tiny waif, Liz, came scampering to her from the bushes that ringed the schoolyard. "I had me a bird," she wailed, "what I was taming with scraps of me lunch bread, to be a pet, so I would have sumfing to cuddle! Now I fink a cat has gone and et him!"
    "Oh, no!" the princess cried. "Did you see it happen?" She looked to where the child was pointing and saw her own pet lying spread out, bulging belly exposed, in the sun.
    "No. But the cat's got fevvers stuck to his whiskers. Blue ones, like me bird."
    The princess sighed. "It's Delicious."
    Liz burst into tears. "Mebbe it is to a cat, but it was me pet bird he et!"
    The princess patted her back, attempting to comfort her, planning at the same time how to provide the orphan with ... what was it she had said she wanted? Something to cuddle.
    One of the advantages of being royalty was that, though life was boring, it did provide an opportunity to acquire anything one wanted. She could easily get a pet for this lonely child. She could order a singing bird, even a pair of them, perhaps in a gilded cage. But how to get them to little Liz anonymously?
    She needed to give it some more thought. But now the bell was ringing. She could see the schoolmaster (and he was handsome, she thought, very handsome indeed, even if Tess the chambermaid had said he had a fierce face!) standing on the

    steps, shaking the bell to summon them back to their desks.
    ***
    He detained her at the end of the school day. "Pat?" he said. "I'd like you to stay for a minute, if you will."

    The other pupils filed nervously past her on the way to the door. "Punishment," one whispered sympathetically. "Hope it don't be too harsh."
    Punishment? The princess had never been punished for anything, never in her life.
    Apprehensively she waited at her desk until the schoolroom was empty. The schoolmaster, who stood at the door at the end of each day to say goodbye to his students, strode past her to his tall desk at the front. She noticed, again, his soft leather shoes, and remembered what Tess the chambermaid had confided, that the schoolmaster was part of a noble family in another kingdom, though he pretended otherwise.
    His mouth was set in a firm line and his brow was furrowed so that he looked very stern when he summoned