POTTERMORE

[Prince Char] “By the way, you are a month older than the last time I saw you. Are you still too young to marry?”

Char repeated the query in every letter, probably because my answers were so silly that they pleased him. If not too young, I was too tired to marry or too wet or too cross or too hungry. Once I wrote, “If my years are measured by inches, then I am certainly too young.”…”Today I am too old, a hundred at least.”…

Sometimes I wondered what would happen if I told Char that I was just the right age to marry. With each of his letters I fell more in love with him. But I couldn’t tell him. If I said I was old enough to marry and his question had only been the continuance of a good joke, he would be horribly embarrassed and our easy friendship would be ruined. He might stop writing, which I couldn’t endure.

—Ella Enchanted (Novel by Gail Carson Levine)