That was how they began to live day after day on the Holy Lake. Primrose
was quite happy and desired nothing better.
There was clear water in the Lake, and there were sweet raspberries.
There were plenty of flowers and butterflies in the meadow, and
fireflies and dew by night. Nightingales and doves nested in the trees.
Every evening Lavender would make Primrose a bed of leaves, and in the
morning she bathed him in the Lake and tied up his little shoes. And
Primrose thought: “What do we want with a wider world than this within
the furrow?”
Primrose was well off; he was only a baby!
And Lavender was happy, but she was troubled about Primrose, how she
should look after him and get him food. Because God has so ordered it
that the young folk can never get food without the old folk having to
think about it.
That is so all the world over, and couldn’t be otherwise even on the
Holy Lake.
So Lavender was worried. “To-morrow will be St. Peter’s Day. Will the
raspberries be over when St. Peter’s is past? Will the water grow cold
and the sun fail when autumn comes? How shall we get through the winter
all alone? Will our cottage in the valley go to rack and ruin?”
So Lavender worried, and wherever there is worry, there temptation comes
most easily.
One day she sat and mused: “Oh dear! what luck it would be if only we
could get back to our cottage!” Just then she heard somebody calling
from the Mountain. Lavender looked, and there in the wood on the far
side of the furrow stood the youngest of the Votaresses.
She was prettier than the other Votaresses, and loved finery. She had
noticed the Golden Girdle on Lavender, and now she wanted that Golden
Girdle above anything else in the world.
“Little girl, sister, throw me your Girdle,” called the fairy across the
furrow.
“I can’t do that, Fairy; I had that Girdle from my mother,” answered
Lavender.
“Little girl, sister, it wasn’t your mother’s Girdle; it belonged to the
princess, and the princess has been dead long ago. Throw me the Girdle,”
said the Fairy, who remembered the princess.
“I can’t, Fairy; the Girdle is from my mother,” repeated Lavender.
“Little girl, sister, I will carry you and your brother down to the
valley, and no harm shall come to you; throw me the Girdle,” cried the
Fairy once more.
This was a sad temptation for Lavender, who so longed to get away from
the Mountain! But all the same she would not sacrifice her mother’s
keepsake to the greedy fairy, but answered:
“I cannot, Fairy; I had the Girdle from my mother.”
The Fairy went away quite sadly, but next day she came back and began
again:
“Throw me the Girdle, and I will take you down the Mountain.”
“I cannot, Fairy; I had the Girdle from my mother,” Lavender answered
once more, but with a very heavy heart.
For seven days did the Fairy come, and for seven days she tempted
Lavender. Temptation is worse than the sharpest care, and poor little
Lavender pined away, so great was her wish to get down to the valley.
Yet all the same she would not give up the Girdle.
For seven days did the Fairy call, and for seven days did Lavender
answer her:
“I cannot, Fairy; the Girdle is from my mother.”
And when she answered thus on the seventh day, the Fairy saw that there
was no help for it.
The Fairy went down the Mountain; she sat down on the last, lowest
stone, shook down her hair and cried bitterly, so great was her desire
for the Golden Girdle of the princess.