After three books she is a little tired.

"Did you eat dinner before you came over?"

"No."

"Let's get you something to eat. Do you want to walk downstairs or do you want me to carry you?"

"You can carry me."

Downstairs they go with snuggly tiny one-year-old and pick things out of the fridge for her to try. Raspberries! Cheese! Cereal! Walnuts! Bacon strips! Apples! 

She looks extremely skeptical when they offer her cheese and bewildered when they try bacon. She will taste raspberries and cereal and walnuts and apples, with tiny dainty bites.

They will probably have to check in with a doctor to make sure she is not malnourished and that's why she's so tiny. But if those are the things she would like to eat then she can have those.

She doesn't eat much of anything, even the things she says are yummy (mostly fruit).

They will make a doctor's appointment once she goes to bed. "Is that all you want?"

"I'm not hungry."

"Okay. Let's brush your teeth and get ready for bed."

She is also unfamiliar with toothbrushes but tolerates the introduction with only mild annoyance.

"Keeping your teeth healthy is important because you'll have them for a very long time."

"Why does doing that keep them healthy?"

He looks it up. "Brushing gets rid of icky things which might stick to your teeth from eating, and it keeps your gums healthy."

"So if I didn't eat I wouldn't have to?"

"If you didn't eat you wouldn't grow, and you would get very sick and tired, and your brain wouldn't grow and let you learn new things."

"What about on days I don't eat though?"

"Growing people need to eat every day."

That does not sound quite right to Lintalai but she lets it drop.

"Let's read some bedtime stories."

"Okay." She grabs Baby Princess!

Baby Princess wakes up. She looks through her window at all of the people. Some are working. Some are playing. Some are walking. Some are kissing! 

"Baby Princess," says her nanny, "it is time to go to school."

"I don't think so," says the Princess. "There is so much else to do!"

"Baby Princess," says her nanny, "we can do those things after school. If you don't learn math and politics, you won't know the things you need to rule."

Baby Princess goes downstairs. She eats a snack. She hugs her cat. "I don't want to learn those things," she says. "I will hire clever people and they'll tell me what to do."

"Baby Princess," says her nanny, "I see a problem with that plan. Do you ever really listen to all of us who work for you?"

Baby Princess takes her sleepclothes off and puts on her favorite dress. "Sometimes I listen to you," she says, "If I like the thing you said."

"So whatever will you do when your advisors come to you? One says 'I know', one says 'that's wrong', how will you decide who you can trust?"

"Maybe," says the Princess, "I could let them both try things. And then I can just listen to the one whose ideas win!"

"What a good idea," says nanny. "But what if there are ten? And what if some have bad ideas that should not happen anywhere?"

"This is a lot of work," she says, "and I am only two. Maybe today I'll sit and play and learn things when I'm big."

"All right," says her nanny, and the Princess is surprised.

"I thought that you would tell me that I had to go to school."

"I did! And you asked questions, and you listened to the answers. And you came up with ideas and you thought how they might fail. You see, when you're a princess, the whole world is a school. And if you want to learn right here, we'll bring the school to you."

And the Princess was quite happy, and when her tutors came, she asked them lots of questions and she taught them to play games. And when the day was done she said "I tried that, and it worked! I learned a lot of things and I had a lot of fun. I know I have a lot to learn, but learning will be great. Learning is just poking things until they all make sense, and learning how to argue is a kind of learning too. Nanny, I don't think that I should ever go to school."

"Well," said nanny, "you're the princess, and the thing you tried did work. As long as you learn everything, I think that this might work. But now? Guess what? It's time for bed."

...said the princess, "No."

"I suspected that might happen," said her nanny. "Ugh. Please?"

"No."

"If you do not go to bed you will be sleepy the next day."

"But right now I am not sleepy and I want to stay and play."

"Your tutors need not stay all night; they go home to their beds. If you want to learn things you can't play the night away, and then be sleepy and a grouchy princess all througout the day."

"They could stay all night as well," she said, "and sleep when I am tired."

"That is quite an imposition," said the nanny, "they might leave. Then you'd learn things from worse tutors and that wouldn't do at all."

"I could say they cannot leave!" said the princess, quite upset.

"Then all will fear to work for you, and hide away instead!"

"But," she said, "I'm not tired, and this really isn't fair."

"Well, lie down," said her nanny, "and we'll talk it through some more."

"Maybe they could put their lectures on a pocket everything, and then if they were sleeping I could watch it when I pleased."

"But you ask so many questions," said the nanny, "that really will not do. A video won't know the things you'll want explained to you."

"I could have lots of tutors," said the princess in her bed. "And one would always be awake if the others were in bed."

"How would they know what you'd already discussed? You'd waste a lot of time explaining things someone else had said."

"We could invent a special thing so no one needs to sleep?"

"Is that the most important thing for our researchers to do?"

"Yes," said the princess, "sleep is boring and I have so much to do."

"Is it sleeping that is boring or the lying very still?"

"Both of those are boring," says the princess, very still. 

"When I am very tired," says her nanny, "sleep is nice. I lie so quietly, like you, and I imagine jumping mice.

"That's stupid," says the princess, frowning at the wall. 

"I usually can't get to ten, but I bet that you could count them all."

"One, two, three," says the princess, "four five six. How many mice are there?"

"I don't know, I've never reached the end."

"Seven eight nine, ten eleven twelve. You said you only got to ten, but no one counts like me. Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen."

And she dropped off to sleep.

And one very tired nanny smiled and hurried off to bed.

"Two is older than me and I'm not a baby," Lintalai objects.