Some woman who knows how to tell a story sends me the following:
This is a fairy-story, but it is not about a princess; princesses are
always wonderfully beautiful and wise and good, and the little girl in
this story was a rather silly little girl.
She lived in a little house, on a great highway, and watched and waited
for the coming of the prince for whom all girls, big and small, great
princesses and poor silly little spinners, watch and wait.
Many people passed the little house by the roadside, as they travelled
along the great highway. Once or twice the girl who watched thought she
saw the prince in the distance, but always as he approached the likeness
faded. Then came one traveller, who tarried for a while at the little
house. He came quietly, unostentatiously, and the prince was to come
riding on a white charger, clothed in the splendor of purple and gold.
So she hid herself under a cloak until the traveller again set out on
the great highway, alone.
But after he had gone she saw that he had left a shadow behind him, and
for some contrary, woman-reason, she hid it, and guarded it carefully,
in case he should return and claim it.
The days became weeks—the weeks months—the months years, and the prince
did not appear. Gradually she gave up the hope of him ever appearing,
and no longer watched for him, but occupied her days instead with
wholesome labor. And now she was no longer a silly little girl, but a
lonely woman.
One evening she stood in the doorway, watching the sunset. The highway
was quite deserted, save for one lone traveller, off in the distance,
who seemed vaguely familiar. As he approached, she recognized in him the
one who had tarried at her dwelling almost five years before.
She went back into the house, to get the shadow from its secret
hiding-place, to return it to him. But when she had opened the door of
the little room where she kept it she suddenly realized that she did not
want to give it up. She had kept it so long, and had grown so used to
considering it hers, that she never realized how precious it had become
until she had to part with it. She went to the door once more and looked
out upon the highway. He was quite near now, and as she stared at him
she saw with wonder what she had been blind to before—he was her prince!
She wanted to run out to meet him, with a great joy in her heart and a
glad cry on her lips, but she was bound by convention. And she was
filled with a great fear, lest he should pass by, merely thinking of her
as a silly little girl who had hidden herself when he came the first
time and let him go on alone. And she decided that, as she was not
allowed to reveal herself to him, neither would she attempt to stop him
and return the shadow which was rightly his, but would at least keep
that, to help make the coming years less lonely.
And that is the end of this fairy-story. And after all, I am not sure
that it is a REAL fairy-story, because most fairy-stories end—“And they
lived happy ever after.”
Perhaps you, who are so much wiser than the silly little woman, can
think of a better ending for it.
I thank you, dear unknown sender of this tale, for your pretty
compliment. If in any way I might claim to be wiser than you, or than
any one who feels destiny has cheated him, it is because I have ceased
to seek the shrine of the Little Cheating God of Happy Endings, and
visit rather the Great God of Day by Day.