The Complete Short Stories of W.D. Howells (Illustrated Edition). William Dean Howells

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      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.

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