“The milk’s very thick.”
“It’s giant cow’s milk,” said Tony, “you drink it up and let’s see what
happens.”
“I don’t know,” said the King, suspiciously, “suppose it’s poison; I
shall have it analysed.”
“Well, you promised me a reward,” said Tony, “and you wouldn’t grudge
it if you knew what a time I’ve had of it. I might have been killed,
you know.”
“_Reward!_” said the King, who had been looking at the mug, “_reward!_
when you have cracked my mug—my own only mug, with ‘A present for a
good King’ on it. Reward indeed! a stamp from the Great Seal would be
more——”
But Tony was gone. He ran home to tell his grandfather—but his
grandfather was not there—only a letter lay on the kitchen table.
“Dear grandson,” it said, “the King has found out that my name was
entered in the register as Anthony Antrobus, and he refuses to believe
that the alteration to Sydney Cecil Ernest Watchett was made at my
birth. So I am seeking safety at a distance. I have only one piece of
advice to give you. _Do so too._—Your loving Grandfather.”
This seemed such good advice to Tony, whose name was also in the
register, that he was just going to take it when the door was flung
open, and in rushed the King and the Army. They hustled and bustled
and rustled round the house, breaking and tearing everything, and when
there was nothing more to spoil they carried Tony off to prison.
“So this is my reward for getting the milk for him,” said poor Tony
to himself, as he sat in prison, loaded with chains, and waiting for
his trial. “I wish I had drunk the milk myself. This is what comes of
loyalty. But I don’t care, my name is Tony, and his is not, and I will
say so too, if I hang for it.”
Acting on this resolution next day, at his trial, Tony said so, and
what is more, he came very near indeed to hanging for it. For King
Anthony XXIII. was furious. He absolutely danced with rage, and it took
six Prime Ministers to restrain his emotion while the trial went on.
Tony was tried for an attempt to murder the King. The whole thing, said
the Public Persecutor, was nothing but a plot. The prophecy of Henry
Birkbeck, which nobody had seen, till Tony found it; the Blue Mountain,
which nobody but Tony had seen at all; the thick milk so mysteriously
obtained, all pointed to dark treason and villainy. The crack in the
mug was a peculiarly incriminating circumstance. (I cannot help the
long words—Public Persecutors will use them.) It was a vile plot, the
Persecutor said, but it had failed. The Public Analyst gave evidence
that the milk was not milk at all, but some explosive substance too
dangerous to analyse.
Tony looked at the Jury and he looked round the Court, and he saw that
the case did indeed look black against himself. When he was asked what
was his defence, he said—
“There is no pleasing some people.”
“It is my duty to caution you,” said the Persecutor, “that everything
you say will be used against you.”
“I am sure it will,” said Tony, wearily, “but I can’t help that,
everything I do is used against me too. I needn’t have told any one
anything about it. I might have got the milk myself and been King, but
I got it for him, and I did not crack the mug. At least, I am almost
sure not. I only wish I had drunk the milk.”
“Make him drink it now,” shouted a thousand voices from the crowded
Court.
“Don’t!” said the King, hastily, “it might not be poison after all.”
“You can’t have it both ways, your Majesty,” said the Persecutor
bravely; “either it is poison, in which case the Prisoner deserves to
drink it, or it is not poison, in which case the Prisoner leaves the
Court without a stain upon his character.”
“It is poison!”
[Illustration: “EVERYTHING YOU SAY WILL BE USED AGAINST YOU,” SAID THE
PUBLIC PERSECUTOR.]
“It isn’t!”
“It is!”
“It is not!”
The shouts rose louder and louder.
“It is not poison, it is milk!” cried Tony, and suddenly seizing
the mug of milk, which had been brought into the Court to give its
evidence, he lifted it to his lips, and before the Jailer could prevent
it, he drained the milk to the last drop and ran out of the Court. For
every one was too astonished to stop him.
The moment he was outside, he felt a sudden and awful change in
himself. He was growing, growing, growing. He hurried out of the town.
He felt that it would soon be too small to hold him. Outside he got
bigger and bigger till the trees of the nearer forest were like grass
under his feet, and the mug ran out of his hand like a little grain of
rape-seed. And there beside him stood the Mountain—a little girl in a
blue dress—and he was taller than she was.
“Hullo!” said the Blue Mountain, “where did you spring from?”
“From the town down there,” said Tony.
“There?” said the Mountain, stooping, “that’s not a town, silly, you
know it’s only an ant-heap, really.”
“It is my town,” said Tony, “and its name is Antioch, and——”
And then he told her the whole story. In the middle of it she sat down
to listen better, crushing millions of trees as she sat. And Tony sat
down, crushing other millions, only now it seemed to him that he had
sat down on the grass. It makes a great deal of difference what size
you are.
“And that is where I used to live,” said Tony, pointing to the town,
“and my name is Tony.”
“I know that,” said the Blue Mountain, “but you live next door to us,
you know you do, you always did, and that is only an ant-heap.”
And when Tony looked down again it seemed to him that perhaps it really
was only an ant-heap.
All the same he knew the King when he saw him hurrying along the
ramparts, and he picked the King up and put him on a cow’s ear. And the
cow scratched its ear with its hind foot. And that was the end of the
King.
“Don’t tease the ants,” said the Blue Mountain. “People pour boiling
water sometimes, or dig up the heaps, but I think it’s cruel.”
[Illustration: HE WAS GROWING, GROWING, GROWING.]
Tony remembered the hot rain and the earthquakes.
“It is a nice story,” she said, “of course the grass is like a forest
to the ants, and the big forest is the hedge. Your Sunday suit is silk
velvet, your aunt told mother so. Yes, it is a nice story, and an ant
did drop into my bread and milk yesterday, though I don’t know how you
knew.”
“You mayn’t believe it;” said Tony, “but I shall give them corn because
it says so in Mr. Birkbeck’s prophecy, only I won’t ever give them any
milk in case they grow big. They are too bad-tempered. Just think if
the King had been our size!”
“Oh, come along home, do,” said the Blue Mountain, a little crossly.
“I am tired. It is dinner time, it’s no use pretending about Kings and
things. You know well enough you are only Tony-next-door.”
And whatever he may have been before, it is quite certain that since
then he has been “Tony-next-door,” and nothing else whatever.
_THE PRINCE, TWO MICE, AND SOME KITCHEN-MAIDS_
WHEN the Prince was born the Queen said to the King, “My dear, do be
very, very careful about the invitations. You know what fairies are.
They always come to the christening whether you invite them or not,
and if you forget to invite one of them she always makes herself so
terribly unpleasant.”
“My love,” said the King, “I will invite them all,” and he took out his
diamond-pointed pen and wrote out the cards on the spot.
But just then a herald came in to bring news of war. So the King had to
go off in a hurry. The invitations were sent out, but the christening
had to be put off for a year. At the end of this time the King had
subdued all his enemies, so he was very pleased with himself. The
Prince was a year old, and he also was pleased with himself, as all
good babies are, and found the little royal fingers and toes a fresh
and ever-delightful mystery. And the Queen was pleased with herself,
as all good mothers should be—so everything went merrily. The Palace
was hung with cloth of silver and strewn with fresh daisies, in honour
of the great day, and after all had eaten and drunk to their hearts’
content the fairies came near with the gifts they had brought to their
godson the Prince.
“He shall have beauty,” said the first.
“And wit,” said the second.
“And a pretty sweetheart,” said the third; “who loves him,” said the
fourth.
And so they went on, foretelling for him all sorts of happy and
desirable things. And as each fairy gave her gift she stooped and
kissed the baby Prince, and then spreading her fine gossamer-gauze
wings, fluttered away across the rosy garden. The crowd of fairies grew
less and less, and there were only three left when the Queen pulled the
King’s sleeve and whispered, “My dear, where’s Malevola?”
“I sent her a card,” said the King, casting an anxious look round him.
“Then it must have been lost on the way,” said the Queen, “or she’d
have been here——”
“She _is_ here,” said a low voice in the Queen’s ear. Suddenly the room
grew dark, grey clouds hid the sun, and all the daisies on the floor
shut up quite close. The poor Queen gave a start and a scream, and the
King, brave as he was, turned pale, for Malevola was a terrible fairy,
and the dress she wore was not at all the thing for a christening. It
was made of spiders’ webs matted together, dark and dank with the damp
of the tomb and the dust of dungeons. Her wings were the wings of a
great bat; spiders and newts crawled round her neck; a serpent coiled
about her waist and little snakes twisted and writhed in her straight
black hair.
She looked at the Queen so terribly that her poor Mother-Majesty cried
out without meaning to.
“Oh don’t!” she cried, and flung both arms round the cradle. The Prince
was quite happy, playing with his new coral and bells, and looking at
the Palace cat, who sat at the foot of the cradle washing herself.
“Now listen,” said Malevola, still speaking in the low, even voice that
was so terrible. “You did not invite me to the christening. I’ve read
my fairy tales, and I know what’s expected of a fairy who is left out
on an occasion like this. I intend to curse your son.”
Then all the Kings and Queens who had come to the christening wished
they had stayed away, and they and all the Court fell on their knees
and begged Malevola for mercy. As for the three good fairies who were
left, they hid behind the window-curtains, and the Court ladies,
peeping between their fingers, said—
“Fancy deserting their godson like this! How unfairy-like!”
But the Queen and the King only wept, and the Prince played with his
rattle and looked at the cat.
Then Malevola said mockingly: “Great King and mighty Sovereign,
Malevola was not good enough to be asked to your tea-party. But
your family shall come down in the world; your son shall marry a
kitchen-maid and marry a lady with four feet and no hands.”
A shiver of horror ran through the room, and Malevola vanished. Then,
suddenly, the sun came out, and people lifted up their heads, and dared
again to look at each other. And the daisies, too, opened their eyes
again.
[Illustration: MALEVOLA’S DRESS WAS NOT AT ALL THE THING FOR A
CHRISTENING.]
Then the good fairies came out from behind the window-curtains, and the
poor Queen fell on her knees before them.
“Can’t you do _anything_?” she asked. “Can’t you undo what she says,
and make it untrue?”
“Not even a fairy can make a true thing untrue,” said the good fairies
sadly. “Malevola’s words will come true; but the Prince has already
many gifts, and our gifts are yet to give, and these you shall choose.
Whatever you wish shall be his.”
Then the King, recovering a little from the terror into which the fairy
Malevola had thrown him, and remembering how well he and his royal line
had always borne them in battle, said at once—
“Let the boy be brave.”
“He is brave,” said one of the good fairies; “he fears nothing.”
And at this the Prince ceased to feel any fear of the Palace cat. He
put out his hand and pulled her tail so merrily that Pussy turned and
clawed the little arm till the blood ran.
“Oh, dear!” cried his mother, “he is fearless, as you say. I wish he
were afraid of cats, poor darling.”
“He is,” said the second fairy; “you have your wish.” And, indeed, the
Prince screamed, and hid his face, and shrank from the Palace cat with
such horror that the King pulled out his pencil and note-book and wrote
an edict then and there banishing all cats from his dominions. But, all
the same, he was very angry.
“Your Majesty has wasted one wish,” he said very politely to the Queen;
“let us now leave the last gift in the hands of the last fairy.”
The last fairy came and kissed the Prince, who was now sobbing sleepily.
“He shall be happy,” she said; “he shall have his heart’s desire.”
Then she too vanished; and the Kings and Queens took their leave when
their gold coaches came for them. And presently the King and Queen were
left alone with the silver hangings and the strewn daisies and the baby.
“Oh dear! oh dear!” said the Queen; “this is dreadful! A
kitchen-maid!—and a lady with four feet and no hands!”
“At least we are not likely to have a kitchen-maid with less than two
hands,” said the King.
“We might arrange only to have _titled_ kitchen-maids,” said the Queen
timidly.
“The very thing,” the King answered: “that would make the love affair
all that one could wish. But there’s still the marriage.”
“Of course he’ll marry the lady he loves.”
“It’s not the way of the world,” said the King. “At any rate, let’s
hope he’ll love the lady he marries. Otherwise——”
“Otherwise what?” said the Queen.
“We know nothing about otherwise, do we, my Queen?” he said, catching
her round the waist. And in his love for his wife and his son the King
felt almost happy again, for here they were all three together, and
when your son is in his cradle his marriage seems very far off indeed.
But the Queen was anxious and frightened, and while the Prince was
still a child she sent messengers to the Courts of all the neighbouring
Kings and Queens to tell them what had been foretold, which, indeed,
most of them knew, having been at the christening. And she begged such
of them as had daughters to send them as kitchen-maids, that so the
Prince might at least fall in love with a real Princess. And as the
Prince grew up he was so handsome and so brave, fearing nothing but
cats, which, of course, he never saw, though he dreamed of them often
and woke screaming, and also so brilliant and good, that, his father’s
kingdom, being beyond compare the finest in all the round world, the
young daughters of Kings vied with each other as to who should find
favour in the eyes of the Queen-Mother, and so get leave to serve in
the kitchen, each nursing the hope that some day the Prince would see
her and love her, and perhaps even marry her. And he was very good
friends with all the noble kitchen-maids, but he loved none of them,
till one day he saw, at a window of the tower where the kitchen was,
a bright face and bright hair tied round with a scarlet kerchief. And
as he looked at the face it was withdrawn—but the Prince had lost his
heart. He kept his secret safe in the place where his heart had been,
and schemed and plotted to see this fair lady again; for when he went
among the royal kitchen-maids she was not there with them. And he
looked morning, noon, and evening, but he never could see her. So then
he said—
“I must watch o’ nights—perhaps she is kept in prison in the tower
above the kitchen, and at night those who watch her may sleep, and so I
shall be able to talk to her.”
So he dressed in dark clothes and hid in the shadow of the palace
courtyard and watched all one night. And he saw nothing. But in the
early morning, when the setting moon and the rising sun were mixing
their lights in the sky, he heard a heavy bolt shot back, and the
door of the kitchen tower opened slowly. The Prince crouched behind a
buttress and watched, and he saw the fair maid with the bright hair
under the red kerchief. She swept the doorstep, and she drew water
from the well in the middle of the courtyard; and presently he crept
to the kitchen window and saw her light the fire and wash the dishes,
and make all neat and clean within. And the Prince’s eyes followed her
in all she did, and the more he looked at her the more he loved her.
And at last he heard sounds as of folks stirring above, so he crept
away, keeping close to the wall, and so back to his own rooms. And this
he did again on the next morning, and on the next. And on the third
morning, as he stood looking through the window at the girl with the
bright hair and the bright kerchief, the gold chain he wore clinked
against the stone of the window-sill. The maid started, and the bowl
she held dropped on to the brick floor of the kitchen and broke into
twenty pieces; and then and there she sat down on the floor beside it,
and began to cry bitterly.
The Prince ran in and knelt beside her.
“Don’t cry, dear,” he said, “I’ll get you another bowl.”
“It isn’t that,” she sobbed, “but now they’ll send me away.”
“Who will?”
“The noble Kitchen-Maids. They keep me to do the work because, being
Kings’ daughters, they don’t know how to do anything; but the Queen
doesn’t know that there is a Real Kitchen-maid here, and now you have
found out they will send me away.”
And she went on crying.
“Then you are a Real Kitchen-maid, and not noble at all?” said the
Prince.
She stopped crying for a minute to say “No.”
“Never mind,” said the Prince. “You are twice as pretty as all the
Kings’ daughters put together and twenty times as dear.”
At that she stopped crying for good and all, and looked up at him from
the floor where she sat.
“Yes you are,” he said, “and I love you with all my heart.”
And with that he caught her in his arms and kissed her; and the Real
Kitchen-Maid laid her face against his, and her heart beat wildly, for
she knew what the Prince did not, and what, indeed, all the folk knew
except the Prince, that this had been foretold at his christening; but
she knew also that though he loved her, he was not to marry her, since
it was his dreadful destiny to marry some one with four feet and no
hands.
“I wish I had no hands and four feet,” said the Real Kitchen-maid to
herself. “I wouldn’t mind a bit, since it is me he loves.”
“What are you saying?” asked the Prince.
“I am saying that you must go,” said she. “If their Kitchen Highnesses
find you here with me they’ll tear me into little pieces, for they all
love you—to a Highness.”
“And you,” he whispered, “how much do you love me?”
“Oh,” she answered, “I love you better than my right hand and my left.”
And the Prince thought that a very strange answer. He went through that
day in a happy dream; but he did not tell his dream to any one, lest
some harm should come to the Real Kitchen-Maid. For he meant to marry
her, and he had a feeling that his parents would not approve of the
match.
Now that night, when the whole palace was asleep, the Real Kitchen-Maid
got up and crept out past the sleepy sentinel and went home to her
father the farmer and got one of his great white cart horses and rode
away through the woods to the cavern where the Great White Rat sits
sleeplessly guarding the Magic Cat’s-eye.
And every one wondered why he guarded it so carefully, for it seemed
to have no great value. But the Great White Rat watched it constantly,
without ever closing one of those round bright rat’-eyes of his, and
when folk sought to lay hands on it he said—
“Be careful: it has the power to change you into a mouse.”
On which folk dropped it hastily and went their ways, leaving him still
on guard.
To him now went the little Kitchen-Maid, and asked for help, for he
was thousands of years old, and had more wisdom between his nose and
ears than all the books in all the world. She told him all that had
happened.
“Now what shall I do?” she said. And the Great White Rat, never
shifting his eyes from the Magic Cat’s-eye, answered—
“Keep your own counsel and be contented. The Prince loves you.”
“But,” said the Real Kitchen-Maid, “he is not to marry me, but a
horrible creature with four feet and no hands.”
“Keep your secret and be content,” the Great White Rat repeated, “and
if ever you see him in danger from a lady with four feet and no hands,
come straight to me.”
So the Real Kitchen-Maid went back to the Palace, and set to work to
clean pots and pans, for now it was bright dewy daylight, and the night
had gone. And before the rest were awake again her Prince came to her
and vowed he loved her more than life; so she kept her secret and was
content.
At the time of the Prince’s christening the King had banished all cats
from the kingdom, because he could not bear to see his son show fear of
anything. But now and then strangers, not knowing of the edict, brought
cats to that country, and if the Prince saw one of these cats he was
taken with a trembling and a paleness, standing like stone awhile, and
presently, with shrieks of terror, fleeing the spot. And it was now a
long time since he had seen a cat.
Now, soon after the Prince had found out how he loved the Real
Kitchen-Maid, his father and mother died suddenly as they were sitting
hand in hand, for they loved each other so much that it was not
possible for either to stay here without the other.
So then the Prince wept bitterly, and would not be comforted, and the
Court stood about him with a long face, wearing its new mourning.
And as he sat there with his face hidden Something came through the
Palace gate and up the marble stairs and into the great hall where the
Prince sat on the steps of his father’s throne weeping. And, before the
courtiers could draw breath or decide whether it was Court etiquette
for them to do anything while the Prince was crying except to stand
still and look sad, the creature came up to the Prince and began to rub
itself against his arm. And he, still hiding his face, reached out his
hand and stroked it!
Then all the Court drew a deep breath, for they saw that the thing that
had come in was a great black Cat.
And the Prince raised his eyes, and they looked to see him shrink and
shriek; but instead he passed his hand over the black fur and said—
“Poor Pussy, then!”
And at these words the whole Court fled—by window and door. The
courtiers took horse, those who had carriages went away in them, those
who had none went on foot, and in less than a minute the Prince and the
Cat were left alone together.
For the Court was learned in witch law, and knowing the Prince’s horror
of cats it saw at once that a cat he was not afraid of was no cat at
all, but a witch in that shape. Therefore the courtiers and the whole
Royal household fled trembling and hid themselves.
All but the little Real Kitchen-Maid. She saw with terror that the
Cat, or rather the witch in Cat’s shape, had done what no one else
could do—roused the Prince from his dull dream of grief. And then she
remembered the fate which Malevola had foretold for him—that he should
marry a lady with four feet and no hands.
“Alack-a-day!” she cried. “This witch has four feet and no hands; but
she can have hands whenever she chooses, and be a woman by her magic
arts as easily as she can be a cat. And then he will love her—and what
will become of me? Or, worse, she may marry him only to torment him.
She may shut him up in some enchanted dungeon far from the light of
day. Such things have happened before now.”
So she stood, hidden by the blue arras, and wrung her hands, and the
tears ran down her cheeks. And all the time the black Cat purred to the
Prince, and the Prince stroked the black Cat, and any one could have
seen that he was every moment becoming more deeply bewitched. And still
the Real Kitchen-Maid crouched behind the arras, and her heart ached
that it knew no way to save him. Then suddenly she remembered the words
of the Great White Rat—
“If ever you see him in danger from a lady with four feet and no hands
come straight to me.”
Now surely was the time, for the Prince, she knew, was in desperate
danger.
The Real Kitchen-Maid crept silently down the marble stairs, but once
she was out of the Palace she ran like the wind to the stable. No men
were about there—all had followed the example of the Court, and had run
away when they heard of the strange coming of the witch-Cat. And of
all the many horses that had stood in the stable only one remained,
for each man in his fright had saddled the first horse that came to
hand and ridden off on it. And the one that still stayed there was the
Prince’s own black charger. He had had no mind to be saddled in haste
by a stranger, and had turned and bitten the stranger who had attempted
it. So he was there alone.
Now the little Kitchen-Maid lifted the Prince’s gold-broidered saddle
from its perch, and the weight of it was such that she could not have
carried it but for the heavy heart she bore because of her love to the
Prince and his danger, and that made all else seem light. She put the
saddle on the charger, and the jewelled bridle. And he neighed with
pleasure, for he understood, being a horse who could see as far into
a stone wall as most people. And when he was saddled he knelt for her
to mount, and then up and away like the wind, and she had no need to
guide him with the reins, for he found the way and kept it. He galloped
steadily on, and the sun went down and the night grew dark, and he went
on, and on, and on without stumble or pause, till at moonrise he halted
before the house of the Great White Rat.
Then, as the Real Kitchen-Maid sprang down, the Great White Rat came
out from his house and spoke. “You’ve come for it, then?”
“For what?”
“The Magic Cat’s-eye. I’ve guarded it some thousands of years. I knew
there would be a use for it at last. He may be saved yet, if some one
should love him well enough to die for him.”
“I do that,” said the little Kitchen-Maid, and took the Cat’s-eye in
her hands.
“Swallow it,” said the White Rat, “and you’ll turn into a mouse.”
The little maid swallowed it at once, and, behold! she was a little
mouse.
“What am I to do?” she asked.
“I can’t tell you,” said the Great White Rat, “but Love will tell you.”
So the little Kitchen-Maid, in the form of the mouse, ran up one of the
horse’s legs, and held tight on to the saddle with all her little claws.
And as the great horse galloped back towards the palace in the
moonlight, she thought and thought, and at last she said to herself—
“The witch is in cat’s shape, and she must have cat nature, so she will
run after a mouse. She will run after _me_, and if I can lead her to a
running stream she will leap across it, and then she will have to take
her own shape again. That must be what the Great White Rat meant me to
do. And if the Cat catches me—well, at least if I can’t save my Prince
I can die for him.”
And the thought warmed her heart as the great horse thundered on
through the dawn-light.
When at last, creeping softly on little noiseless feet, the
Mouse-Kitchen-Maid re-entered the great hall, she saw that she was
only just in time, for the black Cat was purring and looking back at
the Prince as she walked, waving her black tail towards the further
door of the hall, and the Prince, more bewitched than ever, was slowly
following her.
Then the Real-Kitchen-Maid-Mouse uttered a squeak, and rushed across
the porphyry floor, and the black Cat, true to its cat nature, left
purring at the Prince and sprang after the Mouse, and the Mouse at
its best speed, made for the garden where ran the stream that fed the
marble basins where the royal gold-fish lived. The Prince understood
nothing save that the enchanting black furry creature was leaving him,
and in an instant he was alone. He followed to the door, and saw the
Cat springing along the passage down the stairs—he followed fast—then
along another passage that passed the foot of the back stairs, and he
saw that the back stairs were like a water-fall—water was running down
in a torrent and meandering away down the brick passage and out into
the faint new sunshine.
When the Mouse saw this stream, she thought, “I’m saved.” She never
thought of wondering how a stream came to be running down the back
stairs of the palace. When she came to think of it afterwards she
always believed that the Great White Rat had managed it somehow. She
never knew that it was really a great flood from the royal bathroom,
where the royal housemaid, in her eagerness to run away from the witch,
had left all the royal bath-taps full on.
The Mouse bounded across the stream—the Cat saw the danger, but she
could not stop herself. She, too, crossed the stream, and as she
crossed it she turned into the wicked fairy Malevola—cobwebs, and
snakes, and newts, and bat’s-wings, and all.
The Prince put his hand to his head like one awakening from sleep, and
the horrible fairy vanished suddenly and for ever.
Then the Mouse ran trembling to the Prince, and in its thin little
mouse’s voice told him all.
“My love and my lady,” he said, holding the Mouse against his cheek. “I
will marry you now. That will carry out the wicked fairy’s prophecy.
Then we will go back to the Great White Rat, and you shall be changed
into a Princess.”
So the Prince rang the church bells till all the people came out of
their holes where they had been hiding, to see the strange spectacle of
a Prince married to a Mouse.
And directly they were married they set off on the black charger, and
when they reached the Great White Rat they told their tale.
“And now,” said the Prince joyously, “if you will change her into a
lady again we will go home at once and begin living happily ever after.”
The Great White Rat looked at them gravely.
“It’s impossible,” he said. “I am sorry, but the effects of the Magic
Cat’s-eye are _permanent_. Once a mouse, always a mouse, if you get
moused by the Magic Cat’s-eye.”
The Prince and the Mouse looked sadly at each other. This was the last
thing they had expected. The Great White Rat looked at them earnestly.
Then he said—
“If it would be of any use to you, I’ve got another Magic Cat’s-eye.”
He held it out. The Prince took it gladly. Kingdom and the life of a
king were nothing to him compared with the love and happiness of a
Real-Kitchen-Maid disguised as a mouse. He put the stone to his lips.
“You know what’ll happen if you do,” said the Great White Rat.
“I shall change into a mouse and live happy ever after,” said the
Prince gaily.
“Perhaps,” said the Great White Rat, “nothing is impossible if people
love each other enough.”
“You mustn’t,” cried the Mouse, trying to get between his lips and the
Cat’s-eye.
“My dear little Real Kitchen-Maid,” said the Prince tenderly, “you have
saved my life—and you _are_ my life. I would rather be a mouse with you
than a king without you!” And with that he swallowed the Cat’s-eye,
and two small mice stood side by side before the Great White Rat. Very
kindly he looked at them. Then he pulled a hair from his left whisker
and laid it across their little brown backs. And on the instant there
stood up a Prince and a Princess and at their feet lay the little
empty mouse-skins.
[Illustration: THERE STOOD UP A PRINCE AND A PRINCESS.]
“It’s lucky for you,” said the Great White Rat, “that you chose to
swallow the Cat’s-eye, because people who have been moused by that
means can never be un-moused except _in pairs_. Nothing is impossible
if people only love each other enough.”
So the Prince and his bride returned to the palace and lived happy ever
after. They were as happy as if they had been mice—which, in a country
where there are no cats, is saying a good deal. Of course the Prince
is still afraid of cats. But the curious thing is that now his wife is
afraid of them too. Perhaps she learnt that lesson when she was a mouse
for his sake. He, when he was a mouse for hers, learned this lesson,
which is also the moral of this story: “Nothing is impossible if people
only love each other enough.”
_MELISANDE_
_OR, LONG AND SHORT DIVISION_
WHEN the Princess Melisande was born, her mother, the Queen, wished to
have a christening party, but the King put his foot down and said he
would not have it.
“I’ve seen too much trouble come of christening parties,” said he.
“However carefully you keep your visiting-book, some fairy or other
is sure to get left out, and you know what _that_ leads to. Why, even
in my own family, the most shocking things have occurred. The Fairy
Malevola was not asked to my great-grandmother’s christening—and you
know all about the spindle and the hundred years’ sleep.”
“Perhaps you’re right,” said the Queen. “My own cousin by marriage
forgot some stuffy old fairy or other when she was sending out the
cards for her daughter’s christening, and the old wretch turned up at
the last moment, and the girl drops toads out of her mouth to this day.”
“Just so. And then there was that business of the mouse and the
kitchen-maids,” said the King; “we’ll have no nonsense about it. I’ll
be her godfather, and you shall be her godmother, and we won’t ask a
single fairy; then none of them can be offended.”
“Unless they all are,” said the Queen.
And that was exactly what happened. When the King and the Queen and
the baby got back from the christening the parlourmaid met them at the
door, and said—
“Please, your Majesty, several ladies have called. I told them you were
not at home, but they all said they’d wait.”
“Are they in the parlour?” asked the Queen.
“I’ve shown them into the Throne Room, your Majesty,” said the
parlourmaid. “You see, there are several of them.”
There were about seven hundred. The great Throne Room was crammed with
fairies, of all ages and of all degrees of beauty and ugliness—good
fairies and bad fairies, flower fairies and moon fairies, fairies like
spiders and fairies like butterflies—and as the Queen opened the door
and began to say how sorry she was to have kept them waiting, they all
cried, with one voice, “Why didn’t you ask _me_ to your christening
party?”
“I haven’t had a party,” said the Queen, and she turned to the King and
whispered, “I told you so.” This was her only consolation.
“You’ve had a christening,” said the fairies, all together.
“I’m very sorry,” said the poor Queen, but Malevola pushed forward and
said, “Hold your tongue,” most rudely.
Malevola is the oldest, as well as the most wicked, of the fairies.
She is deservedly unpopular, and has been left out of more christening
parties than all the rest of the fairies put together.
“Don’t begin to make excuses,” she said, shaking her finger at the
Queen. “That only makes your conduct worse. You know well enough what
happens if a fairy is left out of a christening party. We are all going
to give our christening presents _now_. As the fairy of highest social
position, I shall begin. The Princess shall be bald.”
The Queen nearly fainted as Malevola drew back, and another fairy, in a
smart bonnet with snakes in it, stepped forward with a rustle of bats’
wings. But the King stepped forward too.
“No you don’t!” said he. “I wonder at you, ladies, I do indeed. How can
you be so unfairylike? Have none of you been to school—have none of you
studied the history of your own race? Surely you don’t need a poor,
ignorant King like me to tell you that this is _no go_?”
“How dare you?” cried the fairy in the bonnet, and the snakes in it
quivered as she tossed her head. “It is my turn, and I say the Princess
shall be——”
The King actually put his hand over her mouth.
“Look here,” he said; “I won’t have it. Listen to reason—or you’ll
be sorry afterwards. A fairy who breaks the traditions of fairy
history goes out—you know she does—like the flame of a candle. And
all tradition shows that only _one_ bad fairy is ever forgotten at a
christening party and the good ones are always invited; so either this
is not a christening party, or else you were all invited except one,
and, by her own showing, that was Malevola. It nearly always is. Do I
make myself clear?”
Several of the better-class fairies who had been led away by Malevola’s
influence murmured that there was something in what His Majesty said.
“Try it, if you don’t believe me,” said the King; “give your nasty
gifts to my innocent child—but as sure as you do, out you go, like a
candle-flame. Now, then, will you risk it?”
No one answered, and presently several fairies came up to the Queen and
said what a pleasant party it had been, but they really must be going.
This example decided the rest. One by one all the fairies said goodbye
and thanked the Queen for the delightful afternoon they had spent with
her.
“It’s been quite too lovely,” said the lady with the snake-bonnet;
“_do_ ask us again soon, dear Queen. I shall be so _longing_ to see you
again, and the _dear_ baby,” and off she went, with the snake-trimming
quivering more than ever.
When the very last fairy was gone the Queen ran to look at the baby—she
tore off its Honiton lace cap and burst into tears. For all the baby’s
downy golden hair came off with the cap, and the Princess Melisande was
as bald as an egg.
“Don’t cry, my love,” said the King. “I have a wish lying by, which
I’ve never had occasion to use. My fairy godmother gave it me for a
wedding present, but since then I’ve had nothing to wish for!”
“Thank you, dear,” said the Queen, smiling through her tears.
“I’ll keep the wish till baby grows up,” the King went on. “And then
I’ll give it to her, and if she likes to wish for hair she can.”
“Oh, won’t you wish for it _now_?” said the Queen, dropping mixed tears
and kisses on the baby’s round, smooth head.
“No, dearest. She may want something else more when she grows up. And
besides, her hair may grow by itself.”
But it never did. Princess Melisande grew up as beautiful as the sun
and as good as gold, but never a hair grew on that little head of hers.
The Queen sewed her little caps of green silk, and the Princess’s
pink and white face looked out of these like a flower peeping out of
its bud. And every day as she grew older she grew dearer, and as she
grew dearer she grew better, and as she grew more good she grew more
beautiful.