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PinkMonkey.com Digital Library - PinkMonkey.com-The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain


with hunger and fatigue. He had been on his feet a good part of a day and a
night, for it was now two or three o’clock in the morning, and had eaten nothing
meantime. He murmured drowsily: ‘Prithee, call me when the table is spread,’
and sunk into a deep sleep immediately.

A smile twinkled in Hendon’s eye, and he said to himself: ‘By the mass, the little
beggar takes to one’s quarters and usurps one’s bed with as natural and easy a
grace as if he owned them-with never a by-your-leave or so-please-it-you, or
anything of the sort. In his diseased ravings he called himself the Prince of
Wales, and bravely doth he keep up the character. Poor little friendless rat,
doubtless his mind has been disordered with ill usage. Well, I will be his friend;
I have saved him, and it draweth me strongly to him; already I love the bold-
tongued little rascal. How soldierlike he faced the smutty rabble and flung back
his high defiance! And what a comely, sweet and gentle face he hath, now that
sleep hath conjured away its troubles and its griefs. I will teach him, I will cure
his malady; yea, I will be his elder brother, and care for him and watch over
him; and who so would shame him or do him hurt, may order his shroud, for
though I be burnt for it he shall need it!’

He bent over the boy and contemplated him with kind and pitying interest,
tapping the young cheek tenderly and smoothing back the tangled curls with his
great brown hand. A slight shiver passed over the boy’s form. Hendon
muttered: ‘See, now, how like a man it was to let him lie here uncovered and fill
his body with deadly rheums. Now what shall I do? ‘Twill wake him to take him
up and put him within the bed, and he sorely needeth sleep.’ He looked about
for extra covering, but finding none, doffed his doublet and wrapped the lad in
it, saying, ‘I am used to nipping air and scant apparel, ‘tis little I shall mind the
cold’- then walked up and down the room to keep his blood in motion,
soliloquizing as before.

‘His injured mind persuades him he is Prince of Wales; ‘twill be odd to have a
Prince of Wales still with us, now that he that was the prince is prince no more,
but king-for this poor mind is set upon the one fantasy, and will not reason out
that now it should cast by the prince and call itself the king.... If my father liveth
still, after these seven years that I have heard naught from home in my foreign
dungeon, he will welcome the poor lad and give him generous shelter for my
sake; so will my good elder brother, Arthur; my other brother, Hugh-but I will
crack his crown, an he interfere, the fox-hearted, ill-conditioned animal! Yes,
thither will we fare-and straightway, too.’ A servant entered with a smoking
meal, disposed it upon a small deal table, placed the chairs, and took his
departure, leaving such cheap lodgers as these to wait upon themselves. The
door slammed after him, and the noise woke the boy, who sprung to a sitting
posture, and shot a glad glance about him; then a grieved look came into his face
and he murmured to himself, with a deep sigh, ‘Alack, it was but a dream. Woe
is me.’ Next he noticed Miles Hendon’s doublet-glanced from that to Hendon,
comprehended the sacrifice that had been made for him, and said, gently: ‘Thou
art good to me, yes, thou art very good to me. Take it and put it on-I shall not
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PinkMonkey.com Digital Library - PinkMonkey.com-The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain



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