The problem is, she’s so hideously ugly,’ said the Queen. ‘We’ll never find her a husband. He’d have to be blind, deaf and stupid.’The King knew there were such people in the world but didn’t want to be related to them.
‘We could bribe someone,’ the Queen continued.
‘Money can’t buy happiness,’ the King suggested.
‘Happiness!’ his wife snapped, ‘What’s happiness got to do with anything? We’ve been married for years. Are we happy? Of course not! Where does the word ‘happiness’ appear in the wedding vows?’
The King regarded his wife’s habit of answering her own questions, of conversing with herself, as disturbing; but it did, at least, allow him to pursue his own, private, regal thoughts, as befitted a kind and powerful ruler.
‘We’ll run a competition for her hand in marriage and a thousand pieces of silver. Suitors will overlook her ugliness for a life of luxury.’
At that moment Florence entered the chamber, just too late to hear her mother’s devastating opinion.
‘Is breakfast ready?’ she squeaked, in that annoying voice of hers. The King looked at her hump, her lank hair, her limp and her squinty eyes.
‘Better make it two thousand,’ he said.
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One story from the hundred in SIXTY SECOND FICTION. Free from: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/107004>
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