Edward Brabourne - Uncle Joe's Stories

For the next few days things went on much the same, the two elder princesses doing all in their power to attract the affection of Zac, and the honest lad striving to avoid them as much as he possibly could do without actual incivility. One day, however, things really came to a crisis. Zac had finished his work earlier than usual, and went into the palace garden to enjoy the fresh air. He took a book with him, and finding a pleasant seat in a little summer-house, which had been built near a natural waterfall which formed one of the beauties of the place, he sat himself thereupon, and began to read.

It was a lovely spot, and the moment was one which occasionally comes to everybody in the warm summer-time, when the sound of falling water, the rays of the sun just piercing through a thick leafy screen, the low singing of the birds and the humming of the insects, all induce a kind of dreamy happiness which gradually steals over the spirit, and not seldom ends in the forgetfulness of sleep. So it was with Zac. He read a page or two with avidity – for his book was interesting – then another page or two rather less eagerly, then more slowly and lazily still; then he ceased to turn over the pages at all, and finally the book slipped from his hands to his knees, and from his knees to the ground, his eyes closed, and he fell into a sweet, dreamless sleep.

Now, as luck would have it, the lovely Concaterina had observed the youth saunter into the garden, as she was watering the mignonette which grew in a box placed upon her window-sill. The opportunity for a tête-à-tête seemed too good to be lost, and she therefore shortly afterwards descended in pursuit of him, having previously made sure that her beloved elder sister was practising music in their joint sitting-room. The princess did not find the boy directly, as she fancied he had gone further into the shrubberies than was really the case, so that by the time she came upon him in the summer-house he was stretched at full length upon the seat and sleeping as I have described.

She gazed upon him for some few seconds in a transport of maidenly affection – so young and so handsome did he seem in her eyes, with his head leaning upon one of his arms which he had carelessly thrown behind it as he sank to sleep. Should she awaken him? and how? She did not take long to decide. In that country there was a proverbial saying – and I believe it is not confined to that country – that if a gentleman finds a lady asleep he has a right to take a kiss by way of legitimate booty. Concaterina had no idea that such a privilege could be properly or fairly confined to one sex, and she therefore leaned gently over the slumbering Zac, and without more ado kissed him tenderly on the cheek.

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