1. What! No Children?
Once upon a time, so long ago that I have quite forgotten the date,
there lived a king and queen who had no children.
And the king said to himself, "All the queens of my acquaintance have
children, some three, some seven, and some as many as twelve; and my
queen has not one. I feel ill-used." So he made up his mind to be cross
with his wife about it. But she bore it all like a good patient queen as she
was. Then the king grew very cross indeed. But the queen pretended to
take it all as a joke, and a very good one too.
"Why don\'t you have any daughters, at least?" said he. "I don\'t say
sons; that might be too much to expect."
"I am sure, dear king, I am very sorry," said the queen.
"So you ought to be," retorted the king; "you are not going to make a
virtue of that, surely."