CHAPTER II

Otago Witness, Issue 2387, 30 November 1899, Page 36 (Supplement)

CHAPTER II

According to all historical records, Lady Marbraun, on giving the two presents to the babies, Felix, the Prince of Umbrorra, and Verita, the daughter of a struggling architect in Sham, really meant well to the children, and intended that they should be well helped on in life. Whether she really knew what troubles would beset them through their terrible gift, before Truth prevailed in the end, I cannot say ; for it was never really discovered whether the wonderful lady was a fairy or just* a person who had come into possession of the two remarkable Talismans of Truth, and hardly knew the use of them.

Whatever her intentions were, however, it was not long before Prince Felix began to have a very bad time, and all through his curious gift. You see, if everybody around him had been quite truthful, they would have experienced no inconvenience from having to tell him exactly what they thought, and did. But, in a palace, more even than anywhere else, people try to hide their thoughts, and to talk about what they consider pleasant, rather than to say what they consider true, or else hold their tongues. As for the King and Queen, Felix after a time began to find that no one seemed to tell the truth to anyone else ex-

cept his father and mother, for other people always contradicted themselves ; there was such a difference between vhat they told him and what they told others. His mother was naturally truthful, and h's father — well, you see, the King had had plenty 'of notice, and carefully prepared himself not even to tell one little fib by the time his son was old enough to be talked to. In any case he was a fairly truthful man. But the people in the palace! They had had so much to do in the past with the people of Sham that they put their foot in it dreadfully a dozen tunes a day. The experience did them good, though, for they began to find out how silly they had been to imitate the Shammites in anything, and they certainly began to improve. Still, they often made mistakes, owing to former bad habits.

So things went on in this way during Prince Felix's boyhood. At first, if he had not had his father and mother, he would have thought that there was nobody true in the world, and nobody who spoke the truth, unless they were forced to do so by the Talisman. I need hardly say that the people of Sham, who were getting worse and worse year by year, kept carefully away from the country of Umborra when they found what a gift the Prince of the Land possessed.

Meanwhile, little Verita was growing up in the country of Sham, and her father and mother were passing through sad times. The Shammites had found, long before my story opens, that, owing to their peculiar customs, they could get nothing real froln one of their own people, and, as I told you before, even their very houses were not what they seemed to be. Not only were they artificial, but they were very uncomfortable, so when they could endure them as they were no longer, they had sent to