Later, Jeeves pointed out to the bereaved and overprotective royal couple that if they burned every spinning wheel in the kingdom they would cripple their not-insubstantial textile industry, and that to foster the boy somewhere with no access to spinners' tools would be the much more economically simple option. The first fairy was nearly strong enough to counter the thirteenth's power and was also no fool, no matter how silly he looked with his long hare's ears and his air of an aristocratic dilettante, and he pointed out that really, it was only year sixteen that they had to worry about.

He was right, and Jeeves held out his wrists and ankles for the tiny, delicate, almost entirely symbolic chains of iron that would make him a servant of the royal household and of the newborn prince in particular. Sixteen years is no hardship to an immortal being, and he enjoyed watching the prince grow into his gifts. He was beautiful, graceful, and sweet-tempered. He sang like a bird and any instrument sprang to life under his gentle hands, and after a while Jeeves was glad he hadn't had a chance to bestow his gift. True, the prince could be mentally negligible, but his other perfections were so many that Jeeves became sure that a dazzling intellect would only have served to make him vain of them. As it was, he was charming and artless and at least more sensible than the pack of coxcomb courtiers that followed him around getting him into scrapes.