She and the Lump were playing with Kathleen and Mary, when Kathleen cried in a tone of dismay, "Here's the prince!" picked up Mary, who would have gone quicker on her own feet, and staggered off toward their nurse with her.
Pollyooly picked up the Lump and came with her, though she could see no reason for Kathleen's dismay, for the prince was but a fat little boy of ten, small-eyed, thick-lipped, and snub-nosed.

His white sailor suit seemed to give his ugliness its full values.
Under the wing of their nurse Kathleen and Mary surveyed him with the eyes of terror; and Kathleen poured into Pollyooly's attentive ear the story of his dreadful doings: how he had pushed a little boy over the edge of the sea-wall, kicked several others; how he had hit little girls with their own spades and pulled the hair of others; how he never passed a carefully built castle without kicking a breach in it, and always threw any spades or buckets he could lay hands on far into the sea.
Pollyooly observed this terror with the unimpressed eye of a connoisseur.
When she had lived with her Aunt Hannah in the little slum at the back of the King's Bench Walk, she had fought many battles with the small boys of Alsatia; and she was not at all impressed by the physique of the prince.
She was of the opinion that Henry Wiggins would make very short work of him; and she could hold Henry Wiggins (by the hair) with her left hand and smack him with her right till she was nearly as tired of smacking as he was of being smacked.

She knew that she could because she had done it.
The prince came to the castle they themselves had been building and kicked down one wall of it.
"If only you weren't a prince, I'd teach you, my fine young gentleman," said the nurse softly.
"You mind the Lump! I'll go and smack him hard!" cried Pollyooly with eager confidence.
"No! No! He's a _prince_! You mustn't touch a _prince_, miss!" cried the nurse in a tone of the last horror, gripping Pollyooly's wrist tightly.

"Besides, he'd hurt you.

He's a very nasty, spiteful little boy." "Oh, I don't mind him! I'm not afraid of a little boy like that!" cried Pollyooly; and she tugged at the restraining grip, hard but in vain, eying the pest with the bright light of battle in her eyes.
"I wouldn't let my children play with him like some people do just because he's a prince--not was it ever so.