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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Double Story, by George MacDonald
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Double Story
+
+Author: George MacDonald
+
+Posting Date: May 22, 2010 [EBook #5676]
+Release Date: May, 2004
+First Posted: August 7, 2002
+[Last updated: April 16, 2016]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A DOUBLE STORY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Aldarondo.  HTML version by Al Haines.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A DOUBLE STORY
+
+
+BY GEORGE MACDONALD.
+
+
+NEW YORK:
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A DOUBLE STORY
+
+
+
+I.
+
+
+There was a certain country where things used to go rather oddly. For
+instance, you could never tell whether it was going to rain or hail, or
+whether or not the milk was going to turn sour. It was impossible to
+say whether the next baby would be a boy, or a girl, or even, after he
+was a week old, whether he would wake sweet-tempered or cross.
+
+In strict accordance with the peculiar nature of this country of
+uncertainties, it came to pass one day, that in the midst of a shower
+of rain that might well be called golden, seeing the sun, shining as it
+fell, turned all its drops into molten topazes, and every drop was good
+for a grain of golden corn, or a yellow cowslip, or a buttercup, or a
+dandelion at least;--while this splendid rain was falling, I say, with
+a musical patter upon the great leaves of the horse-chestnuts, which
+hung like Vandyke collars about the necks of the creamy, red-spotted
+blossoms, and on the leaves of the sycamores, looking as if they had
+blood in their veins, and on a multitude of flowers, of which some
+stood up and boldly held out their cups to catch their share, while
+others cowered down, laughing, under the soft patting blows of the
+heavy warm drops;--while this lovely rain was washing all the air clean
+from the motes, and the bad odors, and the poison-seeds that had
+escaped from their prisons during the long drought;--while it fell,
+splashing and sparkling, with a hum, and a rush, and a soft
+clashing--but stop! I am stealing, I find, and not that only, but with
+clumsy hands spoiling what I steal:--
+
+    "O Rain! with your dull twofold sound,
+     The clash hard by, and the murmur all round:"
+
+--there! take it, Mr. Coleridge;--while, as I was saying, the lovely
+little rivers whose fountains are the clouds, and which cut their own
+channels through the air, and make sweet noises rubbing against their
+banks as they hurry down and down, until at length they are pulled up
+on a sudden, with a musical plash, in the very heart of an odorous
+flower, that first gasps and then sighs up a blissful scent, or on the
+bald head of a stone that never says, Thank you;--while the very sheep
+felt it blessing them, though it could never reach their skins through
+the depth of their long wool, and the veriest hedgehog--I mean the one
+with the longest spikes--came and spiked himself out to impale as many
+of the drops as he could;--while the rain was thus falling, and the
+leaves, and the flowers, and the sheep, and the cattle, and the
+hedgehog, were all busily receiving the golden rain, something
+happened. It was not a great battle, nor an earthquake, nor a
+coronation, but something more important than all those put together. A
+BABY-GIRL WAS BORN; and her father was a king; and her mother was a
+queen; and her uncles and aunts were princes and princesses; and her
+first-cousins were dukes and duchesses; and not one of her
+second-cousins was less than a marquis or marchioness, or of their
+third-cousins less than an earl or countess: and below a countess they
+did not care to count. So the little girl was Somebody; and yet for all
+that, strange to say, the first thing she did was to cry. I told you it
+was a strange country.
+
+As she grew up, everybody about her did his best to convince her that
+she was Somebody; and the girl herself was so easily persuaded of it
+that she quite forgot that anybody had ever told her so, and took it
+for a fundamental, innate, primary, first-born, self-evident,
+necessary, and incontrovertible idea and principle that SHE WAS
+SOMEBODY. And far be it from me to deny it. I will even go so far as to
+assert that in this odd country there was a huge number of Somebodies.
+Indeed, it was one of its oddities that every boy and girl in it, was
+rather too ready to think he or she was Somebody; and the worst of it
+was that the princess never thought of there being more than one
+Somebody--and that was herself.
+
+Far away to the north in the same country, on the side of a bleak hill,
+where a horse-chestnut or a sycamore was never seen, where were no
+meadows rich with buttercups, only steep, rough, breezy slopes, covered
+with dry prickly furze and its flowers of red gold, or moister, softer
+broom with its flowers of yellow gold, and great sweeps of purple
+heather, mixed with bilberries, and crowberries, and cranberries--no, I
+am all wrong: there was nothing out yet but a few furze-blossoms; the
+rest were all waiting behind their doors till they were called; and no
+full, slow-gliding river with meadow-sweet along its oozy banks, only a
+little brook here and there, that dashed past without a moment to say,
+"How do you do?"--there (would you believe it?) while the same cloud
+that was dropping down golden rain all about the queen's new baby was
+dashing huge fierce handfuls of hail upon the hills, with such force
+that they flew spinning off the rocks and stones, went burrowing in the
+sheep's wool, stung the cheeks and chin of the shepherd with their
+sharp spiteful little blows, and made his dog wink and whine as they
+bounded off his hard wise head, and long sagacious nose; only, when
+they dropped plump down the chimney, and fell hissing in the little
+fire, they caught it then, for the clever little fire soon sent them up
+the chimney again, a good deal swollen, and harmless enough for a
+while, there (what do you think?) among the hailstones, and the
+heather, and the cold mountain air, another little girl was born, whom
+the shepherd her father, and the shepherdess her mother, and a good
+many of her kindred too, thought Somebody. She had not an uncle or an
+aunt that was less than a shepherd or dairymaid, not a cousin, that was
+less than a farm-laborer, not a second-cousin that was less than a
+grocer, and they did not count farther. And yet (would you believe it?)
+she too cried the very first thing. It WAS an odd country! And, what is
+still more surprising, the shepherd and shepherdess and the dairymaids
+and the laborers were not a bit wiser than the king and the queen and
+the dukes and the marquises and the earls; for they too, one and all,
+so constantly taught the little woman that she was Somebody, that she
+also forgot that there were a great many more Somebodies besides
+herself in the world.
+
+It was, indeed, a peculiar country, very different from ours--so
+different, that my reader must not be too much surprised when I add the
+amazing fact, that most of its inhabitants, instead of enjoying the
+things they had, were always wanting the things they had not, often
+even the things it was least likely they ever could have. The grown men
+and women being like this, there is no reason to be further astonished
+that the Princess Rosamond--the name her parents gave her because it
+means Rose of the World--should grow up like them, wanting every thing
+she could and every thing she couldn't have. The things she could have
+were a great many too many, for her foolish parents always gave her
+what they could; but still there remained a few things they couldn't
+give her, for they were only a common king and queen. They could and
+did give her a lighted candle when she cried for it, and managed by
+much care that she should not burn her fingers or set her frock on
+fire; but when she cried for the moon, that they could not give her.
+They did the worst thing possible, instead, however; for they pretended
+to do what they could not. They got her a thin disc of brilliantly
+polished silver, as near the size of the moon as they could agree upon;
+and, for a time she was delighted.
+
+But, unfortunately, one evening she made the discovery that her moon
+was a little peculiar, inasmuch as she could not shine in the dark. Her
+nurse happened to snuff out the candles as she was playing with it; and
+instantly came a shriek of rage, for her moon had vanished. Presently,
+through the opening of the curtains, she caught sight of the real moon,
+far away in the sky, and shining quite calmly, as if she had been there
+all the time; and her rage increased to such a degree that if it had
+not passed off in a fit, I do not know what might have come of it.
+
+As she grew up it was still the same, with this difference, that not
+only must she have every thing, but she got tired of every thing almost
+as soon as she had it. There was an accumulation of things in her
+nursery and schoolroom and bedroom that was perfectly appalling. Her
+mother's wardrobes were almost useless to her, so packed were they with
+things of which she never took any notice. When she was five years old,
+they gave her a splendid gold repeater, so close set with diamonds and
+rubies, that the back was just one crust of gems. In one of her little
+tempers, as they called her hideously ugly rages, she dashed it against
+the back of the chimney, after which it never gave a single tick; and
+some of the diamonds went to the ash-pit. As she grew older still, she
+became fond of animals, not in a way that brought them much pleasure,
+or herself much satisfaction. When angry, she would beat them, and try
+to pull them to pieces, and as soon as she became a little used to
+them, would neglect them altogether. Then, if they could, they would
+run away, and she was furious. Some white mice, which she had ceased
+feeding altogether, did so; and soon the palace was swarming with white
+mice. Their red eyes might be seen glowing, and their white skins
+gleaming, in every dark corner; but when it came to the king's finding
+a nest of them in his second-best crown, he was angry and ordered them
+to be drowned. The princess heard of it, however, and raised such a
+clamor, that there they were left until they should run away of
+themselves; and the poor king had to wear his best crown every day till
+then. Nothing that was the princess's property, whether she cared for
+it or not, was to be meddled with.
+
+Of course, as she grew, she grew worse; for she never tried to grow
+better. She became more and more peevish and fretful every
+day--dissatisfied not only with what she had, but with all that was
+around her, and constantly wishing things in general to be different.
+She found fault with every thing and everybody, and all that happened,
+and grew more and more disagreeable to every one who had to do with
+her. At last, when she had nearly killed her nurse, and had all but
+succeeded in hanging herself, and was miserable from morning to night,
+her parents thought it time to do something.
+
+A long way from the palace, in the heart of a deep wood of pine-trees,
+lived a wise woman. In some countries she would have been called a
+witch; but that would have been a mistake, for she never did any thing
+wicked, and had more power than any witch could have. As her fame was
+spread through all the country, the king heard of her; and, thinking
+she might perhaps be able to suggest something, sent for her. In the
+dead of the night, lest the princess should know it, the king's
+messenger brought into the palace a tall woman, muffled from head to
+foot in a cloak of black cloth. In the presence of both their
+Majesties, the king, to do her honor, requested her to sit; but she
+declined, and stood waiting to hear what they had to say. Nor had she
+to wait long, for almost instantly they began to tell her the dreadful
+trouble they were in with their only child; first the king talking,
+then the queen interposing with some yet more dreadful fact, and at
+times both letting out a torrent of words together, so anxious were
+they to show the wise woman that their perplexity was real, and their
+daughter a very terrible one. For a long while there appeared no sign
+of approaching pause. But the wise woman stood patiently folded in her
+black cloak, and listened without word or motion. At length silence
+fell; for they had talked themselves tired, and could not think of any
+thing more to add to the list of their child's enormities.
+
+After a minute, the wise woman unfolded her arms; and her cloak
+dropping open in front, disclosed a garment made of a strange stuff,
+which an old poet who knew her well has thus described:--
+
+    "All lilly white, withoutten spot or pride,
+     That seemd like silke and silver woven neare;
+     But neither silke nor silver therein did appeare."
+
+"How very badly you have treated her!" said the wise woman. "Poor
+child!"
+
+"Treated her badly?" gasped the king.
+
+"She is a very wicked child," said the queen; and both glared with
+indignation.
+
+"Yes, indeed!" returned the wise woman. "She is very naughty indeed,
+and that she must be made to feel; but it is half your fault too."
+
+"What!" stammered the king. "Haven't we given her every mortal thing
+she wanted?"
+
+"Surely," said the wise woman: "what else could have all but killed
+her? You should have given her a few things of the other sort. But you
+are far too dull to understand me."
+
+"You are very polite," remarked the king, with royal sarcasm on his
+thin, straight lips.
+
+The wise woman made no answer beyond a deep sigh; and the king and
+queen sat silent also in their anger, glaring at the wise woman. The
+silence lasted again for a minute, and then the wise woman folded her
+cloak around her, and her shining garment vanished like the moon when a
+great cloud comes over her. Yet another minute passed and the silence
+endured, for the smouldering wrath of the king and queen choked the
+channels of their speech. Then the wise woman turned her back on them,
+and so stood. At this, the rage of the king broke forth; and he cried
+to the queen, stammering in his fierceness,--
+
+"How should such an old hag as that teach Rosamond good manners? She
+knows nothing of them herself! Look how she stands!--actually with her
+back to us."
+
+At the word the wise woman walked from the room. The great folding
+doors fell to behind her; and the same moment the king and queen were
+quarrelling like apes as to which of them was to blame for her
+departure. Before their altercation was over, for it lasted till the
+early morning, in rushed Rosamond, clutching in her hand a poor little
+white rabbit, of which she was very fond, and from which, only because
+it would not come to her when she called it, she was pulling handfuls
+of fur in the attempt to tear the squealing, pink-eared, red-eyed thing
+to pieces.
+
+"Rosa, RosaMOND!" cried the queen; whereupon Rosamond threw the rabbit
+in her mother's face. The king started up in a fury, and ran to seize
+her. She darted shrieking from the room. The king rushed after her;
+but, to his amazement, she was nowhere to be seen: the huge hall was
+empty.--No: just outside the door, close to the threshold, with her
+back to it, sat the figure of the wise woman, muffled in her dark
+cloak, with her head bowed over her knees. As the king stood looking at
+her, she rose slowly, crossed the hall, and walked away down the marble
+staircase. The king called to her; but she never turned her head, or
+gave the least sign that she heard him. So quietly did she pass down
+the wide marble stair, that the king was all but persuaded he had seen
+only a shadow gliding across the white steps.
+
+For the princess, she was nowhere to be found. The queen went into
+hysterics; and the rabbit ran away. The king sent out messengers in
+every direction, but in vain.
+
+In a short time the palace was quiet--as quiet as it used to be before
+the princess was born. The king and queen cried a little now and then,
+for the hearts of parents were in that country strangely fashioned; and
+yet I am afraid the first movement of those very hearts would have been
+a jump of terror if the ears above them had heard the voice of Rosamond
+in one of the corridors. As for the rest of the household, they could
+not have made up a single tear amongst them. They thought, whatever it
+might be for the princess, it was, for every one else, the best thing
+that could have happened; and as to what had become of her, if their
+heads were puzzled, their hearts took no interest in the question. The
+lord-chancellor alone had an idea about it, but he was far too wise to
+utter it.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+
+The fact, as is plain, was, that the princess had disappeared in the
+folds of the wise woman's cloak. When she rushed from the room, the
+wise woman caught her to her bosom and flung the black garment around
+her. The princess struggled wildly, for she was in fierce terror, and
+screamed as loud as choking fright would permit her; but her father,
+standing in the door, and looking down upon the wise woman, saw never a
+movement of the cloak, so tight was she held by her captor. He was
+indeed aware of a most angry crying, which reminded him of his
+daughter; but it sounded to him so far away, that he took it for the
+passion of some child in the street, outside the palace-gates. Hence,
+unchallenged, the wise woman carried the princess down the marble
+stairs, out at the palace-door, down a great flight of steps outside,
+across a paved court, through the brazen gates, along half-roused
+streets where people were opening their shops, through the huge gates
+of the city, and out into the wide road, vanishing northwards; the
+princess struggling and screaming all the time, and the wise woman
+holding her tight. When at length she was too tired to struggle or
+scream any more, the wise woman unfolded her cloak, and set her down;
+and the princess saw the light and opened her swollen eyelids. There
+was nothing in sight that she had ever seen before. City and palace had
+disappeared. They were upon a wide road going straight on, with a ditch
+on each side of it, that behind them widened into the great moat
+surrounding the city. She cast up a terrified look into the wise
+woman's face, that gazed down upon her gravely and kindly. Now the
+princess did not in the least understand kindness. She always took it
+for a sign either of partiality or fear. So when the wise woman looked
+kindly upon her, she rushed at her, butting with her head like a ram:
+but the folds of the cloak had closed around the wise woman; and, when
+the princess ran against it, she found it hard as the cloak of a bronze
+statue, and fell back upon the road with a great bruise on her head.
+The wise woman lifted her again, and put her once more under the cloak,
+where she fell asleep, and where she awoke again only to find that she
+was still being carried on and on.
+
+When at length the wise woman again stopped and set her down, she saw
+around her a bright moonlit night, on a wide heath, solitary and
+houseless. Here she felt more frightened than before; nor was her
+terror assuaged when, looking up, she saw a stern, immovable
+countenance, with cold eyes fixedly regarding her. All she knew of the
+world being derived from nursery-tales, she concluded that the wise
+woman was an ogress, carrying her home to eat her.
+
+I have already said that the princess was, at this time of her life,
+such a low-minded creature, that severity had greater influence over
+her than kindness. She understood terror better far than tenderness.
+When the wise woman looked at her thus, she fell on her knees, and held
+up her hands to her, crying,--
+
+"Oh, don't eat me! don't eat me!"
+
+Now this being the best SHE could do, it was a sign she was a low
+creature. Think of it--to kick at kindness, and kneel from terror. But
+the sternness on the face of the wise woman came from the same heart
+and the same feeling as the kindness that had shone from it before. The
+only thing that could save the princess from her hatefulness, was that
+she should be made to mind somebody else than her own miserable
+Somebody.
+
+Without saying a word, the wise woman reached down her hand, took one
+of Rosamond's, and, lifting her to her feet, led her along through the
+moonlight. Every now and then a gush of obstinacy would well up in the
+heart of the princess, and she would give a great ill-tempered tug, and
+pull her hand away; but then the wise woman would gaze down upon her
+with such a look, that she instantly sought again the hand she had
+rejected, in pure terror lest she should be eaten upon the spot. And so
+they would walk on again; and when the wind blew the folds of the cloak
+against the princess, she found them soft as her mother's camel-hair
+shawl.
+
+After a little while the wise woman began to sing to her, and the
+princess could not help listening; for the soft wind amongst the low
+dry bushes of the heath, the rustle of their own steps, and the
+trailing of the wise woman's cloak, were the only sounds beside.
+
+And this is the song she sang:--
+
+        Out in the cold,
+        With a thin-worn fold
+        Of withered gold
+        Around her rolled,
+    Hangs in the air the weary moon.
+        She is old, old, old;
+        And her bones all cold,
+        And her tales all told,
+        And her things all sold,
+    And she has no breath to croon.
+
+        Like a castaway clout,
+        She is quite shut out!
+        She might call and shout,
+        But no one about
+    Would ever call back, "Who's there?"
+        There is never a hut,
+        Not a door to shut,
+        Not a footpath or rut,
+        Long road or short cut,
+    Leading to anywhere!
+
+        She is all alone
+        Like a dog-picked bone,
+        The poor old crone!
+        She fain would groan,
+    But she cannot find the breath.
+        She once had a fire;
+        But she built it no higher,
+        And only sat nigher
+        Till she saw it expire;
+    And now she is cold as death.
+
+        She never will smile
+        All the lonesome while.
+        Oh the mile after mile,
+        And never a stile!
+    And never a tree or a stone!
+        She has not a tear:
+        Afar and anear
+        It is all so drear,
+        But she does not care,
+    Her heart is as dry as a bone.
+
+        None to come near her!
+        No one to cheer her!
+        No one to jeer her!
+        No one to hear her!
+    Not a thing to lift and hold!
+        She is always awake,
+        But her heart will not break:
+        She can only quake,
+        Shiver, and shake:
+    The old woman is very cold.
+
+As strange as the song, was the crooning wailing tune that the wise
+woman sung. At the first note almost, you would have thought she wanted
+to frighten the princess; and so indeed she did. For when people WILL
+be naughty, they have to be frightened, and they are not expected to
+like it. The princess grew angry, pulled her hand away, and cried,--
+
+"YOU are the ugly old woman. I hate you!"
+
+Therewith she stood still, expecting the wise woman to stop also,
+perhaps coax her to go on: if she did, she was determined not to move a
+step. But the wise woman never even looked about: she kept walking on
+steadily, the same pace as before. Little Obstinate thought for
+certain she would turn; for she regarded herself as much too precious
+to be left behind. But on and on the wise woman went, until she had
+vanished away in the dim moonlight. Then all at once the princess
+perceived that she was left alone with the moon, looking down on her
+from the height of her loneliness. She was horribly frightened, and
+began to run after the wise woman, calling aloud. But the song she had
+just heard came back to the sound of her own running feet,--
+
+    All all alone,
+    Like a dog-picked bone!
+
+and again,--
+
+        She might call and shout,
+        And no one about
+    Would ever call back, "Who's there?"
+
+and she screamed as she ran. How she wished she knew the old woman's
+name, that she might call it after her through the moonlight!
+
+But the wise woman had, in truth, heard the first sound of her running
+feet, and stopped and turned, waiting. What with running and crying,
+however, and a fall or two as she ran, the princess never saw her until
+she fell right into her arms--and the same moment into a fresh rage;
+for as soon as any trouble was over the princess was always ready to
+begin another. The wise woman therefore pushed her away, and walked on;
+while the princess ran scolding and storming after her. She had to run
+till, from very fatigue, her rudeness ceased. Her heart gave way; she
+burst into tears, and ran on silently weeping.
+
+A minute more and the wise woman stooped, and lifting her in her arms,
+folded her cloak around her. Instantly she fell asleep, and slept as
+soft and as soundly as if she had been in her own bed. She slept till
+the moon went down; she slept till the sun rose up; she slept till he
+climbed the topmost sky; she slept till he went down again, and the
+poor old moon came peaking and peering out once more: and all that time
+the wise woman went walking on and on very fast. And now they had
+reached a spot where a few fir-trees came to meet them through the
+moonlight.
+
+At the same time the princess awaked, and popping her head out between
+the folds of the wise woman's cloak--a very ugly little owlet she
+looked--saw that they were entering the wood. Now there is something
+awful about every wood, especially in the moonlight; and perhaps a
+fir-wood is more awful than other woods. For one thing, it lets a
+little more light through, rendering the darkness a little more
+visible, as it were; and then the trees go stretching away up towards
+the moon, and look as if they cared nothing about the creatures below
+them--not like the broad trees with soft wide leaves that, in the
+darkness even, look sheltering. So the princess is not to be blamed
+that she was very much frightened. She is hardly to be blamed either
+that, assured the wise woman was an ogress carrying her to her castle
+to eat her up, she began again to kick and scream violently, as those
+of my readers who are of the same sort as herself will consider the
+right and natural thing to do. The wrong in her was this--that she had
+led such a bad life, that she did not know a good woman when she saw
+her; took her for one like herself, even after she had slept in her
+arms.
+
+Immediately the wise woman set her down, and, walking on, within a few
+paces vanished among the trees. Then the cries of the princess rent the
+air, but the fir-trees never heeded her; not one of their hard little
+needles gave a single shiver for all the noise she made. But there were
+creatures in the forest who were soon quite as much interested in her
+cries as the fir-trees were indifferent to them. They began to hearken
+and howl and snuff about, and run hither and thither, and grin with
+their white teeth, and light up the green lamps in their eyes. In a
+minute or two a whole army of wolves and hyenas were rushing from all
+quarters through the pillar like stems of the fir-trees, to the place
+where she stood calling them, without knowing it. The noise she made
+herself, however, prevented her from hearing either their howls or the
+soft pattering of their many trampling feet as they bounded over the
+fallen fir needles and cones.
+
+One huge old wolf had outsped the rest--not that he could run faster,
+but that from experience he could more exactly judge whence the cries
+came, and as he shot through the wood, she caught sight at last of his
+lamping eyes coming swiftly nearer and nearer. Terror silenced her. She
+stood with her mouth open, as if she were going to eat the wolf, but
+she had no breath to scream with, and her tongue curled up in her mouth
+like a withered and frozen leaf. She could do nothing but stare at the
+coming monster. And now he was taking a few shorter bounds, measuring
+the distance for the one final leap that should bring him upon her,
+when out stepped the wise woman from behind the very tree by which she
+had set the princess down, caught the wolf by the throat half-way in
+his last spring, shook him once, and threw him from her dead. Then she
+turned towards the princess, who flung herself into her arms, and was
+instantly lapped in the folds of her cloak.
+
+But now the huge army of wolves and hyenas had rushed like a sea around
+them, whose waves leaped with hoarse roar and hollow yell up against
+the wise woman. But she, like a strong stately vessel, moved unhurt
+through the midst of them. Ever as they leaped against her cloak, they
+dropped and slunk away back through the crowd. Others ever succeeded,
+and ever in their turn fell, and drew back confounded. For some time
+she walked on attended and assailed on all sides by the howling pack.
+Suddenly they turned and swept away, vanishing in the depths of the
+forest. She neither slackened nor hastened her step, but went walking
+on as before.
+
+In a little while she unfolded her cloak, and let the princess look
+out. The firs had ceased; and they were on a lofty height of moorland,
+stony and bare and dry, with tufts of heather and a few small plants
+here and there. About the heath, on every side, lay the forest, looking
+in the moonlight like a cloud; and above the forest, like the shaven
+crown of a monk, rose the bare moor over which they were walking.
+Presently, a little way in front of them, the princess espied a
+whitewashed cottage, gleaming in the moon. As they came nearer, she saw
+that the roof was covered with thatch, over which the moss had grown
+green. It was a very simple, humble place, not in the least terrible to
+look at, and yet, as soon as she saw it, her fear again awoke, and
+always, as soon as her fear awoke, the trust of the princess fell into
+a dead sleep. Foolish and useless as she might by this time have known
+it, she once more began kicking and screaming, whereupon, yet once
+more, the wise woman set her down on the heath, a few yards from the
+back of the cottage, and saying only, "No one ever gets into my house
+who does not knock at the door, and ask to come in," disappeared round
+the corner of the cottage, leaving the princess alone with the
+moon--two white faces in the cone of the night.
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+
+The moon stared at the princess, and the princess stared at the moon;
+but the moon had the best of it, and the princess began to cry. And now
+the question was between the moon and the cottage. The princess thought
+she knew the worst of the moon, and she knew nothing at all about the
+cottage, therefore she would stay with the moon. Strange, was it not,
+that she should have been so long with the wise woman, and yet know
+NOTHING about that cottage? As for the moon, she did not by any means
+know the worst of her, or even, that, if she were to fall asleep where
+she could find her, the old witch would certainly do her best to twist
+her face.
+
+But she had scarcely sat a moment longer before she was assailed by all
+sorts of fresh fears. First of all, the soft wind blowing gently
+through the dry stalks of the heather and its thousands of little bells
+raised a sweet rustling, which the princess took for the hissing of
+serpents, for you know she had been naughty for so long that she could
+not in a great many things tell the good from the bad. Then nobody
+could deny that there, all round about the heath, like a ring of
+darkness, lay the gloomy fir-wood, and the princess knew what it was
+full of, and every now and then she thought she heard the howling of
+its wolves and hyenas. And who could tell but some of them might break
+from their covert and sweep like a shadow across the heath? Indeed, it
+was not once nor twice that for a moment she was fully persuaded she
+saw a great beast coming leaping and bounding through the moonlight to
+have her all to himself. She did not know that not a single evil
+creature dared set foot on that heath, or that, if one should do so, it
+would that instant wither up and cease. If an army of them had rushed
+to invade it, it would have melted away on the edge of it, and ceased
+like a dying wave.--She even imagined that the moon was slowly coming
+nearer and nearer down the sky to take her and freeze her to death in
+her arms. The wise woman, too, she felt sure, although her cottage
+looked asleep, was watching her at some little window. In this,
+however, she would have been quite right, if she had only imagined
+enough--namely, that the wise woman was watching OVER her from the
+little window. But after all, somehow, the thought of the wise woman
+was less frightful than that of any of her other terrors, and at length
+she began to wonder whether it might not turn out that she was no
+ogress, but only a rude, ill-bred, tyrannical, yet on the whole not
+altogether ill-meaning person. Hardly had the possibility arisen in her
+mind, before she was on her feet: if the woman was any thing short of
+an ogress, her cottage must be better than that horrible loneliness,
+with nothing in all the world but a stare; and even an ogress had at
+least the shape and look of a human being.
+
+She darted round the end of the cottage to find the front. But, to her
+surprise, she came only to another back, for no door was to be seen.
+She tried the farther end, but still no door. She must have passed it
+as she ran--but no--neither in gable nor in side was any to be found.
+
+A cottage without a door!--she rushed at it in a rage and kicked at the
+wall with her feet. But the wall was hard as iron, and hurt her sadly
+through her gay silken slippers. She threw herself on the heath, which
+came up to the walls of the cottage on every side, and roared and
+screamed with rage. Suddenly, however, she remembered how her screaming
+had brought the horde of wolves and hyenas about her in the forest,
+and, ceasing at once, lay still, gazing yet again at the moon. And then
+came the thought of her parents in the palace at home. In her mind's
+eye she saw her mother sitting at her embroidery with the tears
+dropping upon it, and her father staring into the fire as if he were
+looking for her in its glowing caverns. It is true that if they had
+both been in tears by her side because of her naughtiness, she would
+not have cared a straw; but now her own forlorn condition somehow
+helped her to understand their grief at having lost her, and not only a
+great longing to be back in her comfortable home, but a feeble flutter
+of genuine love for her parents awoke in her heart as well, and she
+burst into real tears--soft, mournful tears--very different from those
+of rage and disappointment to which she was so much used. And another
+very remarkable thing was that the moment she began to love her father
+and mother, she began to wish to see the wise woman again. The idea of
+her being an ogress vanished utterly, and she thought of her only as
+one to take her in from the moon, and the loneliness, and the terrors
+of the forest-haunted heath, and hide her in a cottage with not even a
+door for the horrid wolves to howl against.
+
+But the old woman--as the princess called her, not knowing that her
+real name was the Wise Woman--had told her that she must knock at the
+door: how was she to do that when there was no door? But again she
+bethought herself--that, if she could not do all she was told, she
+could, at least, do a part of it: if she could not knock at the door,
+she could at least knock--say on the wall, for there was nothing else
+to knock upon--and perhaps the old woman would hear her, and lift her
+in by some window. Thereupon, she rose at once to her feet, and picking
+up a stone, began to knock on the wall with it. A loud noise was the
+result, and she found she was knocking on the very door itself. For a
+moment she feared the old woman would be offended, but the next, there
+came a voice, saying,
+
+"Who is there?"
+
+The princess answered,
+
+"Please, old woman, I did not mean to knock so loud."
+
+To this there came no reply.
+
+Then the princess knocked again, this time with her knuckles, and the
+voice came again, saying,
+
+"Who is there?"
+
+And the princess answered,
+
+"Rosamond."
+
+Then a second time there was silence. But the princess soon ventured to
+knock a third time.
+
+"What do you want?" said the voice.
+
+"Oh, please, let me in!" said the princess.
+
+"The moon will keep staring at me; and I hear the wolves in the wood."
+
+Then the door opened, and the princess entered. She looked all around,
+but saw nothing of the wise woman.
+
+It was a single bare little room, with a white deal table, and a few
+old wooden chairs, a fire of fir-wood on the hearth, the smoke of which
+smelt sweet, and a patch of thick-growing heath in one corner. Poor as
+it was, compared to the grand place Rosamond had left, she felt no
+little satisfaction as she shut the door, and looked around her. And
+what with the sufferings and terrors she had left outside, the new kind
+of tears she had shed, the love she had begun to feel for her parents,
+and the trust she had begun to place in the wise woman, it seemed to
+her as if her soul had grown larger of a sudden, and she had left the
+days of her childishness and naughtiness far behind her. People are so
+ready to think themselves changed when it is only their mood that is
+changed! Those who are good-tempered because it is a fine day, will be
+ill-tempered when it rains: their selves are just the same both days;
+only in the one case, the fine weather has got into them, in the other
+the rainy. Rosamond, as she sat warming herself by the glow of the
+peat-fire, turning over in her mind all that had passed, and feeling
+how pleasant the change in her feelings was, began by degrees to think
+how very good she had grown, and how very good she was to have grown
+good, and how extremely good she must always have been that she was
+able to grow so very good as she now felt she had grown; and she became
+so absorbed in her self-admiration as never to notice either that the
+fire was dying, or that a heap of fir-cones lay in a corner near it.
+Suddenly, a great wind came roaring down the chimney, and scattered the
+ashes about the floor; a tremendous rain followed, and fell hissing on
+the embers; the moon was swallowed up, and there was darkness all about
+her. Then a flash of lightning, followed by a peal of thunder, so
+terrified the princess, that she cried aloud for the old woman, but
+there came no answer to her cry.
+
+Then in her terror the princess grew angry, and saying to herself, "She
+must be somewhere in the place, else who was there to open the door to
+me?" began to shout and yell, and call the wise woman all the bad names
+she had been in the habit of throwing at her nurses. But there came not
+a single sound in reply.
+
+Strange to say, the princess never thought of telling herself now how
+naughty she was, though that would surely have been reasonable. On the
+contrary, she thought she had a perfect right to be angry, for was she
+not most desperately ill used--and a princess too? But the wind howled
+on, and the rain kept pouring down the chimney, and every now and then
+the lightning burst out, and the thunder rushed after it, as if the
+great lumbering sound could ever think to catch up with the swift light!
+
+At length the princess had again grown so angry, frightened, and
+miserable, all together, that she jumped up and hurried about the
+cottage with outstretched arms, trying to find the wise woman. But
+being in a bad temper always makes people stupid, and presently she
+struck her forehead such a blow against something--she thought herself
+it felt like the old woman's cloak--that she fell back--not on the
+floor, though, but on the patch of heather, which felt as soft and
+pleasant as any bed in the palace. There, worn out with weeping and
+rage, she soon fell fast asleep.
+
+She dreamed that she was the old cold woman up in the sky, with no home
+and no friends, and no nothing at all, not even a pocket; wandering,
+wandering forever, over a desert of blue sand, never to get to
+anywhere, and never to lie down or die. It was no use stopping to look
+about her, for what had she to do but forever look about her as she
+went on and on and on--never seeing any thing, and never expecting to
+see any thing! The only shadow of a hope she had was, that she might by
+slow degrees grow thinner and thinner, until at last she wore away to
+nothing at all; only alas! she could not detect the least sign that she
+had yet begun to grow thinner. The hopelessness grew at length so
+unendurable that she woke with a start. Seeing the face of the wise
+woman bending over her, she threw her arms around her neck and held up
+her mouth to be kissed. And the kiss of the wise woman was like the
+rose-gardens of Damascus.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+
+The wise woman lifted her tenderly, and washed and dressed her far more
+carefully than even her nurse. Then she set her down by the fire, and
+prepared her breakfast. The princess was very hungry, and the bread and
+milk as good as it could be, so that she thought she had never in her
+life eaten any thing nicer. Nevertheless, as soon as she began to have
+enough, she said to herself,--
+
+"Ha! I see how it is! The old woman wants to fatten me! That is why she
+gives me such nice creamy milk. She doesn't kill me now because she's
+going to kill me then! She IS an ogress, after all!"
+
+Thereupon she laid down her spoon, and would not eat another
+mouthful--only followed the basin with longing looks, as the wise woman
+carried it away.
+
+When she stopped eating, her hostess knew exactly what she was
+thinking; but it was one thing to understand the princess, and quite
+another to make the princess understand her: that would require time.
+For the present she took no notice, but went about the affairs of the
+house, sweeping the floor, brushing down the cobwebs, cleaning the
+hearth, dusting the table and chairs, and watering the bed to keep it
+fresh and alive--for she never had more than one guest at a time, and
+never would allow that guest to go to sleep upon any thing that had no
+life in it. All the time she was thus busied, she spoke not a word to
+the princess, which, with the princess, went to confirm her notion of
+her purposes. But whatever she might have said would have been only
+perverted by the princess into yet stronger proof of her evil designs,
+for a fancy in her own head would outweigh any multitude of facts in
+another's. She kept staring at the fire, and never looked round to see
+what the wise woman might be doing.
+
+By and by she came close up to the back of her chair, and said,
+
+"Rosamond!"
+
+But the princess had fallen into one of her sulky moods, and shut
+herself up with her own ugly Somebody; so she never looked round or
+even answered the wise woman.
+
+"Rosamond," she repeated, "I am going out. If you are a good girl, that
+is, if you do as I tell you, I will carry you back to your father and
+mother the moment I return."
+
+The princess did not take the least notice.
+
+"Look at me, Rosamond," said the wise woman.
+
+But Rosamond never moved--never even shrugged her shoulders--perhaps
+because they were already up to her ears, and could go no farther.
+
+"I want to help you to do what I tell you," said the wise woman. "Look
+at me."
+
+Still Rosamond was motionless and silent, saying only to herself,
+
+"I know what she's after! She wants to show me her horrid teeth. But I
+won't look. I'm not going to be frightened out of my senses to please
+her."
+
+"You had better look, Rosamond. Have you forgotten how you kissed me
+this morning?"
+
+But Rosamond now regarded that little throb of affection as a momentary
+weakness into which the deceitful ogress had betrayed her, and almost
+despised herself for it. She was one of those who the more they are
+coaxed are the more disagreeable. For such, the wise woman had an awful
+punishment, but she remembered that the princess had been very ill
+brought up, and therefore wished to try her with all gentleness first.
+
+She stood silent for a moment, to see what effect her words might have.
+But Rosamond only said to herself,--
+
+"She wants to fatten and eat me."
+
+And it was such a little while since she had looked into the wise
+woman's loving eyes, thrown her arms round her neck, and kissed her!
+
+"Well," said the wise woman gently, after pausing as long as it seemed
+possible she might bethink herself, "I must tell you then without; only
+whoever listens with her back turned, listens but half, and gets but
+half the help."
+
+"She wants to fatten me," said the princess.
+
+"You must keep the cottage tidy while I am out. When I come back, I
+must see the fire bright, the hearth swept, and the kettle boiling; no
+dust on the table or chairs, the windows clear, the floor clean, and
+the heather in blossom--which last comes of sprinkling it with water
+three times a day. When you are hungry, put your hand into that hole in
+the wall, and you will find a meal."
+
+"She wants to fatten me," said the princess.
+
+"But on no account leave the house till I come back," continued the
+wise woman, "or you will grievously repent it. Remember what you have
+already gone through to reach it. Dangers lie all around this cottage
+of mine; but inside, it is the safest place--in fact the only quite
+safe place in all the country."
+
+"She means to eat me," said the princess, "and therefore wants to
+frighten me from running away."
+
+She heard the voice no more. Then, suddenly startled at the thought of
+being alone, she looked hastily over her shoulder. The cottage was
+indeed empty of all visible life. It was soundless, too: there was not
+even a ticking clock or a flapping flame. The fire burned still and
+smouldering-wise; but it was all the company she had, and she turned
+again to stare into it.
+
+Soon she began to grow weary of having nothing to do. Then she
+remembered that the old woman, as she called her, had told her to keep
+the house tidy.
+
+"The miserable little pig-sty!" she said. "Where's the use of keeping
+such a hovel clean!"
+
+But in truth she would have been glad of the employment, only just
+because she had been told to do it, she was unwilling; for there ARE
+people--however unlikely it may seem--who object to doing a thing for
+no other reason than that it is required of them.
+
+"I am a princess," she said, "and it is very improper to ask me to do
+such a thing."
+
+She might have judged it quite as suitable for a princess to sweep away
+the dust as to sit the centre of a world of dirt. But just because she
+ought, she wouldn't. Perhaps she feared that if she gave in to doing
+her duty once, she might have to do it always--which was true
+enough--for that was the very thing for which she had been specially
+born.
+
+Unable, however, to feel quite comfortable in the resolve to neglect
+it, she said to herself, "I'm sure there's time enough for such a nasty
+job as that!" and sat on, watching the fire as it burned away, the
+glowing red casting off white flakes, and sinking lower and lower on
+the hearth.
+
+By and by, merely for want of something to do, she would see what the
+old woman had left for her in the hole of the wall. But when she put in
+her hand she found nothing there, except the dust which she ought by
+this time to have wiped away. Never reflecting that the wise woman had
+told her she would find food there WHEN SHE WAS HUNGRY, she flew into
+one of her furies, calling her a cheat, and a thief, and a liar, and an
+ugly old witch, and an ogress, and I do not know how many wicked names
+besides. She raged until she was quite exhausted, and then fell fast
+asleep on her chair. When she awoke the fire was out.
+
+By this time she was hungry; but without looking in the hole, she began
+again to storm at the wise woman, in which labor she would no doubt
+have once more exhausted herself, had not something white caught her
+eye: it was the corner of a napkin hanging from the hole in the wall.
+She bounded to it, and there was a dinner for her of something
+strangely good--one of her favorite dishes, only better than she had
+ever tasted it before. This might surely have at least changed her mood
+towards the wise woman; but she only grumbled to herself that it was as
+it ought to be, ate up the food, and lay down on the bed, never
+thinking of fire, or dust, or water for the heather.
+
+The wind began to moan about the cottage, and grew louder and louder,
+till a great gust came down the chimney, and again scattered the white
+ashes all over the place. But the princess was by this time fast
+asleep, and never woke till the wind had sunk to silence. One of the
+consequences, however, of sleeping when one ought to be awake is waking
+when one ought to be asleep; and the princess awoke in the black
+midnight, and found enough to keep her awake. For although the wind had
+fallen, there was a far more terrible howling than that of the wildest
+wind all about the cottage. Nor was the howling all; the air was full
+of strange cries; and everywhere she heard the noise of claws
+scratching against the house, which seemed all doors and windows, so
+crowded were the sounds, and from so many directions. All the night
+long she lay half swooning, yet listening to the hideous noises. But
+with the first glimmer of morning they ceased.
+
+Then she said to herself, "How fortunate it was that I woke! They would
+have eaten me up if I had been asleep." The miserable little wretch
+actually talked as if she had kept them out! If she had done her work
+in the day, she would have slept through the terrors of the darkness,
+and awaked fearless; whereas now, she had in the storehouse of her
+heart a whole harvest of agonies, reaped from the dun fields of the
+night!
+
+They were neither wolves nor hyenas which had caused her such dismay,
+but creatures of the air, more frightful still, which, as soon as the
+smoke of the burning fir-wood ceased to spread itself abroad, and the
+sun was a sufficient distance down the sky, and the lone cold woman was
+out, came flying and howling about the cottage, trying to get in at
+every door and window. Down the chimney they would have got, but that
+at the heart of the fire there always lay a certain fir-cone, which
+looked like solid gold red-hot, and which, although it might easily get
+covered up with ashes, so as to be quite invisible, was continually in
+a glow fit to kindle all the fir-cones in the world; this it was which
+had kept the horrible birds--some say they have a claw at the tip of
+every wing-feather--from tearing the poor naughty princess to pieces,
+and gobbling her up.
+
+When she rose and looked about her, she was dismayed to see what a
+state the cottage was in. The fire was out, and the windows were all
+dim with the wings and claws of the dirty birds, while the bed from
+which she had just risen was brown and withered, and half its purple
+bells had fallen. But she consoled herself that she could set all to
+rights in a few minutes--only she must breakfast first. And, sure
+enough, there was a basin of the delicious bread and milk ready for her
+in the hole of the wall!
+
+After she had eaten it, she felt comfortable, and sat for a long time
+building castles in the air--till she was actually hungry again,
+without having done an atom of work. She ate again, and was idle again,
+and ate again. Then it grew dark, and she went trembling to bed, for
+now she remembered the horrors of the last night. This time she never
+slept at all, but spent the long hours in grievous terror, for the
+noises were worse than before. She vowed she would not pass another
+night in such a hateful haunted old shed for all the ugly women,
+witches, and ogresses in the wide world. In the morning, however, she
+fell asleep, and slept late.
+
+Breakfast was of course her first thought, after which she could not
+avoid that of work. It made her very miserable, but she feared the
+consequences of being found with it undone. A few minutes before noon,
+she actually got up, took her pinafore for a duster, and proceeded to
+dust the table. But the wood-ashes flew about so, that it seemed
+useless to attempt getting rid of them, and she sat down again to think
+what was to be done. But there is very little indeed to be done when we
+will not do that which we have to do.
+
+Her first thought now was to run away at once while the sun was high,
+and get through the forest before night came on. She fancied she could
+easily go back the way she had come, and get home to her father's
+palace. But not the most experienced traveller in the world can ever go
+back the way the wise woman has brought him.
+
+She got up and went to the door. It was locked! What could the old
+woman have meant by telling her not to leave the cottage? She was
+indignant.
+
+The wise woman had meant to make it difficult, but not impossible.
+Before the princess, however, could find the way out, she heard a hand
+at the door, and darted in terror behind it. The wise woman opened it,
+and, leaving it open, walked straight to the hearth. Rosamond
+immediately slid out, ran a little way, and then laid herself down in
+the long heather.
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+
+The wise woman walked straight up to the hearth, looked at the fire,
+looked at the bed, glanced round the room, and went up to the table.
+When she saw the one streak in the thick dust which the princess had
+left there, a smile, half sad, half pleased, like the sun peeping
+through a cloud on a rainy day in spring, gleamed over her face. She
+went at once to the door, and called in a loud voice,
+
+"Rosamond, come to me."
+
+All the wolves and hyenas, fast asleep in the wood, heard her voice,
+and shivered in their dreams. No wonder then that the princess
+trembled, and found herself compelled, she could not understand how, to
+obey the summons. She rose, like the guilty thing she felt, forsook of
+herself the hiding-place she had chosen, and walked slowly back to the
+cottage she had left full of the signs of her shame. When she entered,
+she saw the wise woman on her knees, building up the fire with
+fir-cones. Already the flame was climbing through the heap in all
+directions, crackling gently, and sending a sweet aromatic odor through
+the dusty cottage.
+
+"That is my part of the work," she said, rising. "Now you do yours. But
+first let me remind you that if you had not put it off, you would have
+found it not only far easier, but by and by quite pleasant work, much
+more pleasant than you can imagine now; nor would you have found the
+time go wearily: you would neither have slept in the day and let the
+fire out, nor waked at night and heard the howling of the beast-birds.
+More than all, you would have been glad to see me when I came back; and
+would have leaped into my arms instead of standing there, looking so
+ugly and foolish."
+
+As she spoke, suddenly she held up before the princess a tiny mirror,
+so clear that nobody looking into it could tell what it was made of, or
+even see it at all--only the thing reflected in it. Rosamond saw a
+child with dirty fat cheeks, greedy mouth, cowardly eyes--which, not
+daring to look forward, seemed trying to hide behind an impertinent
+nose--stooping shoulders, tangled hair, tattered clothes, and smears
+and stains everywhere. That was what she had made herself. And to tell
+the truth, she was shocked at the sight, and immediately began, in her
+dirty heart, to lay the blame on the wise woman, because she had taken
+her away from her nurses and her fine clothes; while all the time she
+knew well enough that, close by the heather-bed, was the loveliest
+little well, just big enough to wash in, the water of which was always
+springing fresh from the ground, and running away through the wall.
+Beside it lay the whitest of linen towels, with a comb made of
+mother-of-pearl, and a brush of fir-needles, any one of which she had
+been far too lazy to use. She dashed the glass out of the wise woman's
+hand, and there it lay, broken into a thousand pieces!
+
+Without a word, the wise woman stooped, and gathered the fragments--did
+not leave searching until she had gathered the last atom, and she laid
+them all carefully, one by one, in the fire, now blazing high on the
+hearth. Then she stood up and looked at the princess, who had been
+watching her sulkily.
+
+"Rosamond," she said, with a countenance awful in its sternness, "until
+you have cleansed this room--"
+
+"She calls it a room!" sneered the princess to herself.
+
+"You shall have no morsel to eat. You may drink of the well, but
+nothing else you shall have. When the work I set you is done, you will
+find food in the same place as before. I am going from home again; and
+again I warn you not to leave the house."
+
+"She calls it a house!--It's a good thing she's going out of it
+anyhow!" said the princess, turning her back for mere rudeness, for she
+was one who, even if she liked a thing before, would dislike it the
+moment any person in authority over her desired her to do it.
+
+When she looked again, the wise woman had vanished.
+
+Thereupon the princess ran at once to the door, and tried to open it;
+but open it would not. She searched on all sides, but could discover no
+way of getting out. The windows would not open--at least she could not
+open them; and the only outlet seemed the chimney, which she was afraid
+to try because of the fire, which looked angry, she thought, and shot
+out green flames when she went near it. So she sat down to consider.
+One may well wonder what room for consideration there was--with all her
+work lying undone behind her. She sat thus, however, considering, as
+she called it, until hunger began to sting her, when she jumped up and
+put her hand as usual in the hole of the wall: there was nothing there.
+She fell straight into one of her stupid rages; but neither her hunger
+nor the hole in the wall heeded her rage. Then, in a burst of
+self-pity, she fell a-weeping, but neither the hunger nor the hole
+cared for her tears. The darkness began to come on, and her hunger grew
+and grew, and the terror of the wild noises of the last night invaded
+her. Then she began to feel cold, and saw that the fire was dying. She
+darted to the heap of cones, and fed it. It blazed up cheerily, and she
+was comforted a little. Then she thought with herself it would surely
+be better to give in so far, and do a little work, than die of hunger.
+So catching up a duster, she began upon the table. The dust flew about
+and nearly choked her. She ran to the well to drink, and was refreshed
+and encouraged. Perceiving now that it was a tedious plan to wipe the
+dust from the table on to the floor, whence it would have all to be
+swept up again, she got a wooden platter, wiped the dust into that,
+carried it to the fire, and threw it in. But all the time she was
+getting more and more hungry and, although she tried the hole again and
+again, it was only to become more and more certain that work she must
+if she would eat.
+
+At length all the furniture was dusted, and she began to sweep the
+floor, which happily, she thought of sprinkling with water, as from the
+window she had seen them do to the marble court of the palace. That
+swept, she rushed again to the hole--but still no food! She was on the
+verge of another rage, when the thought came that she might have
+forgotten something. To her dismay she found that table and chairs and
+every thing was again covered with dust--not so badly as before,
+however. Again she set to work, driven by hunger, and drawn by the hope
+of eating, and yet again, after a second careful wiping, sought the
+hole. But no! nothing was there for her! What could it mean?
+
+Her asking this question was a sign of progress: it showed that she
+expected the wise woman to keep her word. Then she bethought her that
+she had forgotten the household utensils, and the dishes and plates,
+some of which wanted to be washed as well as dusted.
+
+Faint with hunger, she set to work yet again. One thing made her think
+of another, until at length she had cleaned every thing she could think
+of. Now surely she must find some food in the hole!
+
+When this time also there was nothing, she began once more to abuse the
+wise woman as false and treacherous;--but ah! there was the bed
+unwatered! That was soon amended.--Still no supper! Ah! there was the
+hearth unswept, and the fire wanted making up!--Still no supper! What
+else could there be? She was at her wits' end, and in very weariness,
+not laziness this time, sat down and gazed into the fire. There, as she
+gazed, she spied something brilliant,--shining even, in the midst of
+the fire: it was the little mirror all whole again; but little she knew
+that the dust which she had thrown into the fire had helped to heal it.
+She drew it out carefully, and, looking into it, saw, not indeed the
+ugly creature she had seen there before, but still a very dirty little
+animal; whereupon she hurried to the well, took off her clothes,
+plunged into it, and washed herself clean. Then she brushed and combed
+her hair, made her clothes as tidy as might be, and ran to the hole in
+the wall: there was a huge basin of bread and milk!
+
+Never had she eaten any thing with half the relish! Alas! however, when
+she had finished, she did not wash the basin, but left it as it was,
+revealing how entirely all the rest had been done only from hunger.
+Then she threw herself on the heather, and was fast asleep in a moment.
+Never an evil bird came near her all that night, nor had she so much as
+one troubled dream.
+
+In the morning as she lay awake before getting up, she spied what
+seemed a door behind the tall eight-day clock that stood silent in the
+corner.
+
+"Ah!" she thought, "that must be the way out!" and got up instantly.
+The first thing she did, however, was to go to the hole in the wall.
+Nothing was there.
+
+"Well, I am hardly used!" she cried aloud. "All that cleaning for the
+cross old woman yesterday, and this for my trouble,--nothing for
+breakfast! Not even a crust of bread! Does Mistress Ogress fancy a
+princess will bear that?"
+
+The poor foolish creature seemed to think that the work of one day
+ought to serve for the next day too! But that is nowhere the way in the
+whole universe. How could there be a universe in that case? And even
+she never dreamed of applying the same rule to her breakfast.
+
+"How good I was all yesterday!" she said, "and how hungry and ill used
+I am to-day!"
+
+But she would NOT be a slave, and do over again to-day what she had
+done only last night! SHE didn't care about her breakfast! She might
+have it no doubt if she dusted all the wretched place again, but she
+was not going to do that--at least, without seeing first what lay
+behind the clock!
+
+Off she darted, and putting her hand behind the clock found the latch
+of a door. It lifted, and the door opened a little way. By squeezing
+hard, she managed to get behind the clock, and so through the door. But
+how she stared, when instead of the open heath, she found herself on
+the marble floor of a large and stately room, lighted only from above.
+Its walls were strengthened by pilasters, and in every space between
+was a large picture, from cornice to floor. She did not know what to
+make of it. Surely she had run all round the cottage, and certainly had
+seen nothing of this size near it! She forgot that she had also run
+round what she took for a hay-mow, a peat-stack, and several other
+things which looked of no consequence in the moonlight.
+
+"So, then," she cried, "the old woman IS a cheat! I believe she's an
+ogress, after all, and lives in a palace--though she pretends it's only
+a cottage, to keep people from suspecting that she eats good little
+children like me!"
+
+Had the princess been tolerably tractable, she would, by this time,
+have known a good deal about the wise woman's beautiful house, whereas
+she had never till now got farther than the porch. Neither was she at
+all in its innermost places now.
+
+But, king's daughter as she was, she was not a little daunted when,
+stepping forward from the recess of the door, she saw what a great
+lordly hall it was. She dared hardly look to the other end, it seemed
+so far off: so she began to gaze at the things near her, and the
+pictures first of all, for she had a great liking for pictures. One in
+particular attracted her attention. She came back to it several times,
+and at length stood absorbed in it.
+
+A blue summer sky, with white fleecy clouds floating beneath it, hung
+over a hill green to the very top, and alive with streams darting down
+its sides toward the valley below. On the face of the hill strayed a
+flock of sheep feeding, attended by a shepherd and two dogs. A little
+way apart, a girl stood with bare feet in a brook, building across it a
+bridge of rough stones. The wind was blowing her hair back from her
+rosy face. A lamb was feeding close beside her; and a sheepdog was
+trying to reach her hand to lick it.
+
+"Oh, how I wish I were that little girl!" said the princess aloud. "I
+wonder how it is that some people are made to be so much happier than
+others! If I were that little girl, no one would ever call me naughty."
+
+She gazed and gazed at the picture. At length she said to herself,
+
+"I do not believe it is a picture. It is the real country, with a real
+hill, and a real little girl upon it. I shall soon see whether this
+isn't another of the old witch's cheats!"
+
+She went close up to the picture, lifted her foot, and stepped over the
+frame.
+
+"I am free, I am free!" she exclaimed; and she felt the wind upon her
+cheek.
+
+The sound of a closing door struck on her ear. She turned--and there
+was a blank wall, without door or window, behind her. The hill with the
+sheep was before her, and she set out at once to reach it.
+
+Now, if I am asked how this could be, I can only answer, that it was a
+result of the interaction of things outside and things inside, of the
+wise woman's skill, and the silly child's folly. If this does not
+satisfy my questioner, I can only add, that the wise woman was able to
+do far more wonderful things than this.
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+
+Meantime the wise woman was busy as she always was; and her business
+now was with the child of the shepherd and shepherdess, away in the
+north. Her name was Agnes.
+
+Her father and mother were poor, and could not give her many things.
+Rosamond would have utterly despised the rude, simple playthings she
+had. Yet in one respect they were of more value far than hers: the king
+bought Rosamond's with his money; Agnes's father made hers with his
+hands.
+
+And while Agnes had but few things--not seeing many things about her,
+and not even knowing that there were many things anywhere, she did not
+wish for many things, and was therefore neither covetous nor avaricious.
+
+She played with the toys her father made her, and thought them the most
+wonderful things in the world--windmills, and little crooks, and
+water-wheels, and sometimes lambs made all of wool, and dolls made out
+of the leg-bones of sheep, which her mother dressed for her; and of
+such playthings she was never tired. Sometimes, however, she preferred
+playing with stones, which were plentiful, and flowers, which were few,
+or the brooks that ran down the hill, of which, although they were
+many, she could only play with one at a time, and that, indeed,
+troubled her a little--or live lambs that were not all wool, or the
+sheep-dogs, which were very friendly with her, and the best of
+playfellows, as she thought, for she had no human ones to compare them
+with. Neither was she greedy after nice things, but content, as well
+she might be, with the homely food provided for her. Nor was she by
+nature particularly self-willed or disobedient; she generally did what
+her father and mother wished, and believed what they told her. But by
+degrees they had spoiled her; and this was the way: they were so proud
+of her that they always repeated every thing she said, and told every
+thing she did, even when she was present; and so full of admiration of
+their child were they, that they wondered and laughed at and praised
+things in her which in another child would never have struck them as
+the least remarkable, and some things even which would in another have
+disgusted them altogether. Impertinent and rude things done by THEIR
+child they thought SO clever! laughing at them as something quite
+marvellous; her commonplace speeches were said over again as if they
+had been the finest poetry; and the pretty ways which every moderately
+good child has were extolled as if the result of her excellent taste,
+and the choice of her judgment and will. They would even say sometimes
+that she ought not to hear her own praises for fear it should make her
+vain, and then whisper them behind their hands, but so loud that she
+could not fail to hear every word. The consequence was that she soon
+came to believe--so soon, that she could not recall the time when she
+did not believe, as the most absolute fact in the universe, that she
+was SOMEBODY; that is, she became most immoderately conceited.
+
+Now as the least atom of conceit is a thing to be ashamed of, you may
+fancy what she was like with such a quantity of it inside her!
+
+At first it did not show itself outside in any very active form; but
+the wise woman had been to the cottage, and had seen her sitting alone,
+with such a smile of self-satisfaction upon her face as would have been
+quite startling to her, if she had ever been startled at any thing; for
+through that smile she could see lying at the root of it the worm that
+made it. For some smiles are like the ruddiness of certain apples,
+which is owing to a centipede, or other creeping thing, coiled up at
+the heart of them. Only her worm had a face and shape the very image of
+her own; and she looked so simpering, and mawkish, and self-conscious,
+and silly, that she made the wise woman feel rather sick.
+
+Not that the child was a fool. Had she been, the wise woman would have
+only pitied and loved her, instead of feeling sick when she looked at
+her. She had very fair abilities, and were she once but made humble,
+would be capable not only of doing a good deal in time, but of
+beginning at once to grow to no end. But, if she were not made humble,
+her growing would be to a mass of distorted shapes all huddled
+together; so that, although the body she now showed might grow up
+straight and well-shaped and comely to behold, the new body that was
+growing inside of it, and would come out of it when she died, would be
+ugly, and crooked this way and that, like an aged hawthorn that has
+lived hundreds of years exposed upon all sides to salt sea-winds.
+
+As time went on, this disease of self-conceit went on too, gradually
+devouring the good that was in her. For there is no fault that does not
+bring its brothers and sisters and cousins to live with it. By degrees,
+from thinking herself so clever, she came to fancy that whatever seemed
+to her, must of course be the correct judgment, and whatever she
+wished, the right thing; and grew so obstinate, that at length her
+parents feared to thwart her in any thing, knowing well that she would
+never give in. But there are victories far worse than defeats; and to
+overcome an angel too gentle to put out all his strength, and ride away
+in triumph on the back of a devil, is one of the poorest.
+
+So long as she was left to take her own way and do as she would, she
+gave her parents little trouble. She would play about by herself in the
+little garden with its few hardy flowers, or amongst the heather where
+the bees were busy; or she would wander away amongst the hills, and be
+nobody knew where, sometimes from morning to night; nor did her parents
+venture to find fault with her.
+
+She never went into rages like the princess, and would have thought
+Rosamond--oh, so ugly and vile! if she had seen her in one of her
+passions. But she was no better, for all that, and was quite as ugly in
+the eyes of the wise woman, who could not only see but read her face.
+What is there to choose between a face distorted to hideousness by
+anger, and one distorted to silliness by self-complacency? True, there
+is more hope of helping the angry child out of her form of selfishness
+than the conceited child out of hers; but on the other hand, the
+conceited child was not so terrible or dangerous as the wrathful one.
+The conceited one, however, was sometimes very angry, and then her
+anger was more spiteful than the other's; and, again, the wrathful one
+was often very conceited too. So that, on the whole, of two very
+unpleasant creatures, I would say that the king's daughter would have
+been the worse, had not the shepherd's been quite as bad. But, as I
+have said, the wise woman had her eye upon her: she saw that something
+special must be done, else she would be one of those who kneel to their
+own shadows till feet grow on their knees; then go down on their hands
+till their hands grow into feet; then lay their faces on the ground
+till they grow into snouts; when at last they are a hideous sort of
+lizards, each of which believes himself the best, wisest, and loveliest
+being in the world, yea, the very centre of the universe. And so they
+run about forever looking for their own shadows, that they may worship
+them, and miserable because they cannot find them, being themselves too
+near the ground to have any shadows; and what becomes of them at last
+there is but one who knows.
+
+The wise woman, therefore, one day walked up to the door of the
+shepherd's cottage, dressed like a poor woman, and asked for a drink of
+water. The shepherd's wife looked at her, liked her, and brought her a
+cup of milk. The wise woman took it, for she made it a rule to accept
+every kindness that was offered her.
+
+Agnes was not by nature a greedy girl, as I have said; but self-conceit
+will go far to generate every other vice under the sun. Vanity, which
+is a form of self-conceit, has repeatedly shown itself as the deepest
+feeling in the heart of a horrible murderess.
+
+That morning, at breakfast, her mother had stinted her in milk--just a
+little--that she might have enough to make some milk-porridge for their
+dinner. Agnes did not mind it at the time, but when she saw the milk
+now given to a beggar, as she called the wise woman--though, surely,
+one might ask a draught of water, and accept a draught of milk, without
+being a beggar in any such sense as Agnes's contemptuous use of the
+word implied--a cloud came upon her forehead, and a double vertical
+wrinkle settled over her nose. The wise woman saw it, for all her
+business was with Agnes though she little knew it, and, rising, went
+and offered the cup to the child, where she sat with her knitting in a
+corner. Agnes looked at it, did not want it, was inclined to refuse it
+from a beggar, but thinking it would show her consequence to assert her
+rights, took it and drank it up. For whoever is possessed by a devil,
+judges with the mind of that devil; and hence Agnes was guilty of such
+a meanness as many who are themselves capable of something just as bad
+will consider incredible.
+
+The wise woman waited till she had finished it--then, looking into the
+empty cup, said:
+
+"You might have given me back as much as you had no claim upon!"
+
+Agnes turned away and made no answer--far less from shame than
+indignation.
+
+The wise woman looked at the mother.
+
+"You should not have offered it to her if you did not mean her to have
+it," said the mother, siding with the devil in her child against the
+wise woman and her child too. Some foolish people think they take
+another's part when they take the part he takes.
+
+The wise woman said nothing, but fixed her eyes upon her, and soon the
+mother hid her face in her apron weeping. Then she turned again to
+Agnes, who had never looked round but sat with her back to both, and
+suddenly lapped her in the folds of her cloak. When the mother again
+lifted her eyes, she had vanished.
+
+Never supposing she had carried away her child, but uncomfortable
+because of what she had said to the poor woman, the mother went to the
+door, and called after her as she toiled slowly up the hill. But she
+never turned her head; and the mother went back into her cottage.
+
+The wise woman walked close past the shepherd and his dogs, and through
+the midst of his flock of sheep. The shepherd wondered where she could
+be going--right up the hill. There was something strange about her too,
+he thought; and he followed her with his eyes as she went up and up.
+
+It was near sunset, and as the sun went down, a gray cloud settled on
+the top of the mountain, which his last rays turned into a rosy gold.
+Straight into this cloud the shepherd saw the woman hold her pace, and
+in it she vanished. He little imagined that his child was under her
+cloak.
+
+He went home as usual in the evening, but Agnes had not come in. They
+were accustomed to such an absence now and then, and were not at first
+frightened; but when it grew dark and she did not appear, the husband
+set out with his dogs in one direction, and the wife in another, to
+seek their child. Morning came and they had not found her. Then the
+whole country-side arose to search for the missing Agnes; but day after
+day and night after night passed, and nothing was discovered of or
+concerning her, until at length all gave up the search in despair
+except the mother, although she was nearly convinced now that the poor
+woman had carried her off.
+
+One day she had wandered some distance from her cottage, thinking she
+might come upon the remains of her daughter at the foot of some cliff,
+when she came suddenly, instead, upon a disconsolate-looking creature
+sitting on a stone by the side of a stream.
+
+Her hair hung in tangles from her head; her clothes were tattered, and
+through the rents her skin showed in many places; her cheeks were
+white, and worn thin with hunger; the hollows were dark under her eyes,
+and they stood out scared and wild. When she caught sight of the
+shepherdess, she jumped to her feet, and would have run away, but fell
+down in a faint.
+
+At first sight the mother had taken her for her own child, but now she
+saw, with a pang of disappointment, that she had mistaken. Full of
+compassion, nevertheless, she said to herself:
+
+"If she is not my Agnes, she is as much in need of help as if she were.
+If I cannot be good to my own, I will be as good as I can to some other
+woman's; and though I should scorn to be consoled for the loss of one
+by the presence of another, I yet may find some gladness in rescuing
+one child from the death which has taken the other."
+
+Perhaps her words were not just like these, but her thoughts were. She
+took up the child, and carried her home. And this is how Rosamond came
+to occupy the place of the little girl whom she had envied in the
+picture.
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+
+Notwithstanding the differences between the two girls, which were,
+indeed, so many that most people would have said they were not in the
+least alike, they were the same in this, that each cared more for her
+own fancies and desires than for any thing else in the world. But I
+will tell you another difference: the princess was like several
+children in one--such was the variety of her moods; and in one mood she
+had no recollection or care about any thing whatever belonging to a
+previous mood--not even if it had left her but a moment before, and had
+been so violent as to make her ready to put her hand in the fire to get
+what she wanted. Plainly she was the mere puppet of her moods, and more
+than that, any cunning nurse who knew her well enough could call or
+send away those moods almost as she pleased, like a showman pulling
+strings behind a show. Agnes, on the contrary, seldom changed her mood,
+but kept that of calm assured self-satisfaction. Father nor mother had
+ever by wise punishment helped her to gain a victory over herself, and
+do what she did not like or choose; and their folly in reasoning with
+one unreasonable had fixed her in her conceit. She would actually nod
+her head to herself in complacent pride that she had stood out against
+them. This, however, was not so difficult as to justify even the pride
+of having conquered, seeing she loved them so little, and paid so
+little attention to the arguments and persuasions they used. Neither,
+when she found herself wrapped in the dark folds of the wise woman's
+cloak, did she behave in the least like the princess, for she was not
+afraid. "She'll soon set me down," she said, too self-important to
+suppose that any one would dare do her an injury.
+
+Whether it be a good thing or a bad not to be afraid depends on what
+the fearlessness is founded upon. Some have no fear, because they have
+no knowledge of the danger: there is nothing fine in that. Some are too
+stupid to be afraid: there is nothing fine in that. Some who are not
+easily frightened would yet turn their backs and run, the moment they
+were frightened: such never had more courage than fear. But the man who
+will do his work in spite of his fear is a man of true courage. The
+fearlessness of Agnes was only ignorance: she did not know what it was
+to be hurt; she had never read a single story of giant, or ogress or
+wolf; and her mother had never carried out one of her threats of
+punishment. If the wise woman had but pinched her, she would have shown
+herself an abject little coward, trembling with fear at every change of
+motion so long as she carried her.
+
+Nothing such, however, was in the wise woman's plan for the curing of
+her. On and on she carried her without a word. She knew that if she set
+her down she would never run after her like the princess, at least not
+before the evil thing was already upon her. On and on she went, never
+halting, never letting the light look in, or Agnes look out. She walked
+very fast, and got home to her cottage very soon after the princess had
+gone from it.
+
+But she did not set Agnes down either in the cottage or in the great
+hall. She had other places, none of them alike. The place she had
+chosen for Agnes was a strange one--such a one as is to be found
+nowhere else in the wide world.
+
+It was a great hollow sphere, made of a substance similar to that of
+the mirror which Rosamond had broken, but differently compounded. That
+substance no one could see by itself. It had neither door, nor window,
+nor any opening to break its perfect roundness.
+
+The wise woman carried Agnes into a dark room, there undressed her,
+took from her hand her knitting-needles, and put her, naked as she was
+born, into the hollow sphere.
+
+What sort of a place it was she could not tell. She could see nothing
+but a faint cold bluish light all about her. She could not feel that
+any thing supported her, and yet she did not sink. She stood for a
+while, perfectly calm, then sat down. Nothing bad could happen to
+HER--she was so important! And, indeed, it was but this: she had cared
+only for Somebody, and now she was going to have only Somebody. Her own
+choice was going to be carried a good deal farther for her than she
+would have knowingly carried it for herself.
+
+After sitting a while, she wished she had something to do, but nothing
+came. A little longer, and it grew wearisome. She would see whether she
+could not walk out of the strange luminous dusk that surrounded her.
+
+Walk she found she could, well enough, but walk out she could not. On
+and on she went, keeping as much in a straight line as she might, but
+after walking until she was thoroughly tired, she found herself no
+nearer out of her prison than before. She had not, indeed, advanced a
+single step; for, in whatever direction she tried to go, the sphere
+turned round and round, answering her feet accordingly. Like a squirrel
+in his cage she but kept placing another spot of the cunningly
+suspended sphere under her feet, and she would have been still only at
+its lowest point after walking for ages.
+
+At length she cried aloud; but there was no answer. It grew dreary and
+drearier--in her, that is: outside there was no change. Nothing was
+overhead, nothing under foot, nothing on either hand, but the same
+pale, faint, bluish glimmer. She wept at last, then grew very angry,
+and then sullen; but nobody heeded whether she cried or laughed. It was
+all the same to the cold unmoving twilight that rounded her. On and on
+went the dreary hours--or did they go at all?--"no change, no pause, no
+hope;"--on and on till she FELT she was forgotten, and then she grew
+strangely still and fell asleep.
+
+The moment she was asleep, the wise woman came, lifted her out, and
+laid her in her bosom; fed her with a wonderful milk, which she
+received without knowing it; nursed her all the night long, and, just
+ere she woke, laid her back in the blue sphere again.
+
+When first she came to herself, she thought the horrors of the
+preceding day had been all a dream of the night. But they soon asserted
+themselves as facts, for here they were!--nothing to see but a cold
+blue light, and nothing to do but see it. Oh, how slowly the hours went
+by! She lost all notion of time. If she had been told that she had been
+there twenty years, she would have believed it--or twenty minutes--it
+would have been all the same: except for weariness, time was for her no
+more.
+
+Another night came, and another still, during both of which the wise
+woman nursed and fed her. But she knew nothing of that, and the same
+one dreary day seemed ever brooding over her.
+
+All at once, on the third day, she was aware that a naked child was
+seated beside her. But there was something about the child that made
+her shudder. She never looked at Agnes, but sat with her chin sunk on
+her chest, and her eyes staring at her own toes. She was the color of
+pale earth, with a pinched nose, and a mere slit in her face for a
+mouth.
+
+"How ugly she is!" thought Agnes. "What business has she beside me!"
+
+But it was so lonely that she would have been glad to play with a
+serpent, and put out her hand to touch her. She touched nothing. The
+child, also, put out her hand--but in the direction away from Agnes.
+And that was well, for if she had touched Agnes it would have killed
+her. Then Agnes said, "Who are you?" And the little girl said, "Who are
+you?" "I am Agnes," said Agnes; and the little girl said, "I am Agnes."
+Then Agnes thought she was mocking her, and said, "You are ugly;" and
+the little girl said, "You are ugly."
+
+Then Agnes lost her temper, and put out her hands to seize the little
+girl; but lo! the little girl was gone, and she found herself tugging
+at her own hair. She let go; and there was the little girl again! Agnes
+was furious now, and flew at her to bite her. But she found her teeth
+in her own arm, and the little girl was gone--only to return again; and
+each time she came back she was tenfold uglier than before. And now
+Agnes hated her with her whole heart.
+
+The moment she hated her, it flashed upon her with a sickening disgust
+that the child was not another, but her Self, her Somebody, and that
+she was now shut up with her for ever and ever--no more for one moment
+ever to be alone. In her agony of despair, sleep descended, and she
+slept.
+
+When she woke, there was the little girl, heedless, ugly, miserable,
+staring at her own toes. All at once, the creature began to smile, but
+with such an odious, self-satisfied expression, that Agnes felt ashamed
+of seeing her. Then she began to pat her own cheeks, to stroke her own
+body, and examine her finger-ends, nodding her head with satisfaction.
+Agnes felt that there could not be such another hateful, ape-like
+creature, and at the same time was perfectly aware she was only doing
+outside of her what she herself had been doing, as long as she could
+remember, inside of her.
+
+She turned sick at herself, and would gladly have been put out of
+existence, but for three days the odious companionship went on. By the
+third day, Agnes was not merely sick but ashamed of the life she had
+hitherto led, was despicable in her own eyes, and astonished that she
+had never seen the truth concerning herself before.
+
+The next morning she woke in the arms of the wise woman; the horror had
+vanished from her sight, and two heavenly eyes were gazing upon her.
+She wept and clung to her, and the more she clung, the more tenderly
+did the great strong arms close around her.
+
+When she had lain thus for a while, the wise woman carried her into her
+cottage, and washed her in the little well; then dressed her in clean
+garments, and gave her bread and milk. When she had eaten it, she
+called her to her, and said very solemnly,--
+
+"Agnes, you must not imagine you are cured. That you are ashamed of
+yourself now is no sign that the cause for such shame has ceased. In
+new circumstances, especially after you have done well for a while, you
+will be in danger of thinking just as much of yourself as before. So
+beware of yourself. I am going from home, and leave you in charge of
+the house. Do just as I tell you till my return."
+
+She then gave her the same directions she had formerly given
+Rosamond--with this difference, that she told her to go into the
+picture-hall when she pleased, showing her the entrance, against which
+the clock no longer stood--and went away, closing the door behind her.
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+
+As soon as she was left alone, Agnes set to work tidying and dusting
+the cottage, made up the fire, watered the bed, and cleaned the inside
+of the windows: the wise woman herself always kept the outside of them
+clean. When she had done, she found her dinner--of the same sort she
+was used to at home, but better--in the hole of the wall. When she had
+eaten it, she went to look at the pictures.
+
+By this time her old disposition had begun to rouse again. She had been
+doing her duty, and had in consequence begun again to think herself
+Somebody. However strange it may well seem, to do one's duty will make
+any one conceited who only does it sometimes. Those who do it always
+would as soon think of being conceited of eating their dinner as of
+doing their duty. What honest boy would pride himself on not picking
+pockets? A thief who was trying to reform would. To be conceited of
+doing one's duty is then a sign of how little one does it, and how
+little one sees what a contemptible thing it is not to do it. Could any
+but a low creature be conceited of not being contemptible? Until our
+duty becomes to us common as breathing, we are poor creatures.
+
+So Agnes began to stroke herself once more, forgetting her late
+self-stroking companion, and never reflecting that she was now doing
+what she had then abhorred. And in this mood she went into the
+picture-gallery.
+
+The first picture she saw represented a square in a great city, one
+side of which was occupied by a splendid marble palace, with great
+flights of broad steps leading up to the door. Between it and the
+square was a marble-paved court, with gates of brass, at which stood
+sentries in gorgeous uniforms, and to which was affixed the following
+proclamation in letters of gold, large enough for Agnes to read:--
+
+"By the will of the King, from this time until further notice, every
+stray child found in the realm shall be brought without a moment's
+delay to the palace. Whoever shall be found having done otherwise shall
+straightway lose his head by the hand of the public executioner."
+
+Agnes's heart beat loud, and her face flushed.
+
+"Can there be such a city in the world?" she said to herself. "If I
+only knew where it was, I should set out for it at once. THERE would be
+the place for a clever girl like me!"
+
+Her eyes fell on the picture which had so enticed Rosamond. It was the
+very country where her father fed his flocks. Just round the shoulder
+of the hill was the cottage where her parents lived, where she was born
+and whence she had been carried by the beggar-woman.
+
+"Ah!" she said, "they didn't know me there. They little thought what I
+could be, if I had the chance. If I were but in this good, kind,
+loving, generous king's palace, I should soon be such a great lady as
+they never saw! Then they would understand what a good little girl I
+had always been! And I shouldn't forget my poor parents like some I
+have read of. _I_ would be generous. _I_ should never be selfish and
+proud like girls in story-books!"
+
+As she said this, she turned her back with disdain upon the picture of
+her home, and setting herself before the picture of the palace, stared
+at it with wide ambitious eyes, and a heart whose every beat was a
+throb of arrogant self-esteem.
+
+The shepherd-child was now worse than ever the poor princess had been.
+For the wise woman had given her a terrible lesson one of which the
+princess was not capable, and she had known what it meant; yet here she
+was as bad as ever, therefore worse than before. The ugly creature
+whose presence had made her so miserable had indeed crept out of sight
+and mind too--but where was she? Nestling in her very heart, where most
+of all she had her company, and least of all could see her. The wise
+woman had called her out, that Agnes might see what sort of creature
+she was herself; but now she was snug in her soul's bed again, and she
+did not even suspect she was there.
+
+After gazing a while at the palace picture, during which her ambitious
+pride rose and rose, she turned yet again in condescending mood, and
+honored the home picture with one stare more.
+
+"What a poor, miserable spot it is compared with this lordly palace!"
+she said.
+
+But presently she spied something in it she had not seen before, and
+drew nearer. It was the form of a little girl, building a bridge of
+stones over one of the hill-brooks.
+
+"Ah, there I am myself!" she said. "That is just how I used to
+do.--No," she resumed, "it is not me. That snub-nosed little fright
+could never be meant for me! It was the frock that made me think so.
+But it IS a picture of the place. I declare, I can see the smoke of the
+cottage rising from behind the hill! What a dull, dirty, insignificant
+spot it is! And what a life to lead there!"
+
+She turned once more to the city picture. And now a strange thing took
+place. In proportion as the other, to the eyes of her mind, receded
+into the background, this, to her present bodily eyes, appeared to come
+forward and assume reality. At last, after it had been in this way
+growing upon her for some time, she gave a cry of conviction, and said
+aloud,--
+
+"I do believe it is real! That frame is only a trick of the woman to
+make me fancy it a picture lest I should go and make my fortune. She is
+a witch, the ugly old creature! It would serve her right to tell the
+king and have her punished for not taking me to the palace--one of his
+poor lost children he is so fond of! I should like to see her ugly old
+head cut off. Anyhow I will try my luck without asking her leave. How
+she has ill used me!"
+
+But at that moment, she heard the voice of the wise woman calling,
+"Agnes!" and, smoothing her face, she tried to look as good as she
+could, and walked back into the cottage. There stood the wise woman,
+looking all round the place, and examining her work. She fixed her eyes
+upon Agnes in a way that confused her, and made her cast hers down, for
+she felt as if she were reading her thoughts. The wise woman, however,
+asked no questions, but began to talk about her work, approving of some
+of it, which filled her with arrogance, and showing how some of it
+might have been done better, which filled her with resentment. But the
+wise woman seemed to take no care of what she might be thinking, and
+went straight on with her lesson. By the time it was over, the power of
+reading thoughts would not have been necessary to a knowledge of what
+was in the mind of Agnes, for it had all come to the surface--that is
+up into her face, which is the surface of the mind. Ere it had time to
+sink down again, the wise woman caught up the little mirror, and held
+it before her: Agnes saw her Somebody--the very embodiment of miserable
+conceit and ugly ill-temper. She gave such a scream of horror that the
+wise woman pitied her, and laying aside the mirror, took her upon her
+knees, and talked to her most kindly and solemnly; in particular about
+the necessity of destroying the ugly things that come out of the
+heart--so ugly that they make the very face over them ugly also.
+
+And what was Agnes doing all the time the wise woman was talking to
+her? Would you believe it?--instead of thinking how to kill the ugly
+things in her heart, she was with all her might resolving to be more
+careful of her face, that is, to keep down the things in her heart so
+that they should not show in her face, she was resolving to be a
+hypocrite as well as a self-worshipper. Her heart was wormy, and the
+worms were eating very fast at it now.
+
+Then the wise woman laid her gently down upon the heather-bed, and she
+fell fast asleep, and had an awful dream about her Somebody.
+
+When she woke in the morning, instead of getting up to do the work of
+the house, she lay thinking--to evil purpose. In place of taking her
+dream as a warning, and thinking over what the wise woman had said the
+night before, she communed with herself in this fashion:--
+
+"If I stay here longer, I shall be miserable, It is nothing better than
+slavery. The old witch shows me horrible things in the day to set me
+dreaming horrible things in the night. If I don't run away, that
+frightful blue prison and the disgusting girl will come back, and I
+shall go out of my mind. How I do wish I could find the way to the good
+king's palace! I shall go and look at the picture again--if it be a
+picture--as soon as I've got my clothes on. The work can wait. It's not
+my work. It's the old witch's; and she ought to do it herself."
+
+She jumped out of bed, and hurried on her clothes. There was no wise
+woman to be seen; and she hastened into the hall. There was the
+picture, with the marble palace, and the proclamation shining in
+letters of gold upon its gates of brass. She stood before it, and gazed
+and gazed; and all the time it kept growing upon her in some strange
+way, until at last she was fully persuaded that it was no picture, but
+a real city, square, and marble palace, seen through a framed opening
+in the wall. She ran up to the frame, stepped over it, felt the wind
+blow upon her cheek, heard the sound of a closing door behind her, and
+was free. FREE was she, with that creature inside her?
+
+The same moment a terrible storm of thunder and lightning, wind and
+rain, came on. The uproar was appalling. Agnes threw herself upon the
+ground, hid her face in her hands, and there lay until it was over. As
+soon as she felt the sun shining on her, she rose. There was the city
+far away on the horizon. Without once turning to take a farewell look
+of the place she was leaving, she set off, as fast as her feet would
+carry her, in the direction of the city. So eager was she, that again
+and again she fell, but only to get up, and run on faster than before.
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+
+The shepherdess carried Rosamond home, gave her a warm bath in the tub
+in which she washed her linen, made her some bread-and-milk, and after
+she had eaten it, put her to bed in Agnes's crib, where she slept all
+the rest of that day and all the following night.
+
+When at last she opened her eyes, it was to see around her a far poorer
+cottage than the one she had left--very bare and uncomfortable indeed,
+she might well have thought; but she had come through such troubles of
+late, in the way of hunger and weariness and cold and fear, that she
+was not altogether in her ordinary mood of fault-finding, and so was
+able to lie enjoying the thought that at length she was safe, and going
+to be fed and kept warm. The idea of doing any thing in return for
+shelter and food and clothes, did not, however, even cross her mind.
+
+But the shepherdess was one of that plentiful number who can be wiser
+concerning other women's children than concerning their own. Such will
+often give you very tolerable hints as to how you ought to manage your
+children, and will find fault neatly enough with the system you are
+trying to carry out; but all their wisdom goes off in talking, and
+there is none left for doing what they have themselves said. There is
+one road talk never finds, and that is the way into the talker's own
+hands and feet. And such never seem to know themselves--not even when
+they are reading about themselves in print. Still, not being specially
+blinded in any direction but their own, they can sometimes even act
+with a little sense towards children who are not theirs. They are
+affected with a sort of blindness like that which renders some people
+incapable of seeing, except sideways.
+
+She came up to the bed, looked at the princess, and saw that she was
+better. But she did not like her much. There was no mark of a princess
+about her, and never had been since she began to run alone. True,
+hunger had brought down her fat cheeks, but it had not turned down her
+impudent nose, or driven the sullenness and greed from her mouth.
+Nothing but the wise woman could do that--and not even she, without the
+aid of the princess herself. So the shepherdess thought what a poor
+substitute she had got for her own lovely Agnes--who was in fact
+equally repulsive, only in a way to which she had got used; for the
+selfishness in her love had blinded her to the thin pinched nose and
+the mean self-satisfied mouth. It was well for the princess, though,
+sad as it is to say, that the shepherdess did not take to her, for then
+she would most likely have only done her harm instead of good.
+
+"Now, my girl," she said, "you must get up, and do something. We can't
+keep idle folk here."
+
+"I'm not a folk," said Rosamond; "I'm a princess."
+
+"A pretty princess--with a nose like that! And all in rags too! If you
+tell such stories, I shall soon let you know what I think of you."
+
+Rosamond then understood that the mere calling herself a princess,
+without having any thing to show for it, was of no use. She obeyed and
+rose, for she was hungry; but she had to sweep the floor ere she had
+any thing to eat.
+
+The shepherd came in to breakfast, and was kinder than his wife. He
+took her up in his arms and would have kissed her; but she took it as
+an insult from a man whose hands smelt of tar, and kicked and screamed
+with rage. The poor man, finding he had made a mistake, set her down at
+once. But to look at the two, one might well have judged it
+condescension rather than rudeness in such a man to kiss such a child.
+He was tall, and almost stately, with a thoughtful forehead, bright
+eyes, eagle nose, and gentle mouth; while the princess was such as I
+have described her.
+
+Not content with being set down and let alone, she continued to storm
+and scold at the shepherd, crying she was a princess, and would like to
+know what right he had to touch her! But he only looked down upon her
+from the height of his tall person with a benignant smile, regarding
+her as a spoiled little ape whose mother had flattered her by calling
+her a princess.
+
+"Turn her out of doors, the ungrateful hussy!" cried his wife. "With
+your bread and your milk inside her ugly body, this is what she gives
+you for it! Troth, I'm paid for carrying home such an ill-bred tramp in
+my arms! My own poor angel Agnes! As if that ill-tempered toad were one
+hair like her!"
+
+These words drove the princess beside herself; for those who are most
+given to abuse can least endure it. With fists and feet and teeth, as
+was her wont, she rushed at the shepherdess, whose hand was already
+raised to deal her a sound box on the ear, when a better appointed
+minister of vengeance suddenly showed himself. Bounding in at the
+cottage-door came one of the sheep-dogs, who was called Prince, and
+whom I shall not refer to with a WHICH, because he was a very superior
+animal indeed, even for a sheep-dog, which is the most intelligent of
+dogs: he flew at the princess, knocked her down, and commenced shaking
+her so violently as to tear her miserable clothes to pieces. Used,
+however, to mouthing little lambs, he took care not to hurt her much,
+though for her good he left her a blue nip or two by way of letting her
+imagine what biting might be. His master, knowing he would not injure
+her, thought it better not to call him off, and in half a minute he
+left her of his own accord, and, casting a glance of indignant rebuke
+behind him as he went, walked slowly to the hearth, where he laid
+himself down with his tail toward her. She rose, terrified almost to
+death, and would have crept again into Agnes's crib for refuge; but the
+shepherdess cried--
+
+"Come, come, princess! I'll have no skulking to bed in the good
+daylight. Go and clean your master's Sunday boots there."
+
+"I will not!" screamed the princess, and ran from the house.
+
+"Prince!" cried the shepherdess, and up jumped the dog, and looked in
+her face, wagging his bushy tail.
+
+"Fetch her back," she said, pointing to the door.
+
+With two or three bounds Prince caught the princess, again threw her
+down, and taking her by her clothes dragged her back into the cottage,
+and dropped her at his mistress' feet, where she lay like a bundle of
+rags.
+
+"Get up," said the shepherdess.
+
+Rosamond got up as pale as death.
+
+"Go and clean the boots."
+
+"I don't know how."
+
+"Go and try. There are the brushes, and yonder is the blacking-pot."
+
+Instructing her how to black boots, it came into the thought of the
+shepherdess what a fine thing it would be if she could teach this
+miserable little wretch, so forsaken and ill-bred, to be a good,
+well-behaved, respectable child. She was hardly the woman to do it, but
+every thing well meant is a help, and she had the wisdom to beg her
+husband to place Prince under her orders for a while, and not take him
+to the hill as usual, that he might help her in getting the princess
+into order.
+
+When the husband was gone, and his boots, with the aid of her own
+finishing touches, at last quite respectably brushed, the shepherdess
+told the princess that she might go and play for a while, only she must
+not go out of sight of the cottage-door.
+
+The princess went right gladly, with the firm intention, however, of
+getting out of sight by slow degrees, and then at once taking to her
+heels. But no sooner was she over the threshold than the shepherdess
+said to the dog, "Watch her;" and out shot Prince.
+
+The moment she saw him, Rosamond threw herself on her face, trembling
+from head to foot. But the dog had no quarrel with her, and of the
+violence against which he always felt bound to protest in dog fashion,
+there was no sign in the prostrate shape before him; so he poked his
+nose under her, turned her over, and began licking her face and hands.
+When she saw that he meant to be friendly, her love for animals, which
+had had no indulgence for a long time now, came wide awake, and in a
+little while they were romping and rushing about, the best friends in
+the world.
+
+Having thus seen one enemy, as she thought, changed to a friend, she
+began to resume her former plan, and crept cunningly farther and
+farther. At length she came to a little hollow, and instantly rolled
+down into it. Finding then that she was out of sight of the cottage,
+she ran off at full speed.
+
+But she had not gone more than a dozen paces, when she heard a growling
+rush behind her, and the next instant was on the ground, with the dog
+standing over her, showing his teeth, and flaming at her with his eyes.
+She threw her arms round his neck, and immediately he licked her face,
+and let her get up. But the moment she would have moved a step farther
+from the cottage, there he was it front of her, growling, and showing
+his teeth. She saw it was of no use, and went back with him.
+
+Thus was the princess provided with a dog for a private tutor--just the
+right sort for her.
+
+Presently the shepherdess appeared at the door and called her. She
+would have disregarded the summons, but Prince did his best to let her
+know that, until she could obey herself, she must obey him. So she went
+into the cottage, and there the shepherdess ordered her to peel the
+potatoes for dinner. She sulked and refused. Here Prince could do
+nothing to help his mistress, but she had not to go far to find another
+ally.
+
+"Very well, Miss Princess!" she said; "we shall soon see how you like
+to go without when dinner-time comes."
+
+Now the princess had very little foresight, and the idea of future
+hunger would have moved her little; but happily, from her game of romps
+with Prince, she had begun to be hungry already, and so the threat had
+force. She took the knife and began to peel the potatoes.
+
+By slow degrees the princess improved a little. A few more outbreaks of
+passion, and a few more savage attacks from Prince, and she had learned
+to try to restrain herself when she felt the passion coming on; while a
+few dinnerless afternoons entirely opened her eyes to the necessity of
+working in order to eat. Prince was her first, and Hunger her second
+dog-counsellor.
+
+But a still better thing was that she soon grew very fond of Prince.
+Towards the gaining of her affections, he had three advantages: first,
+his nature was inferior to hers; next, he was a beast; and last, she
+was afraid of him; for so spoiled was she that she could more easily
+love what was below than what was above her, and a beast, than one of
+her own kind, and indeed could hardly have ever come to love any thing
+much that she had not first learned to fear, and the white teeth and
+flaming eyes of the angry Prince were more terrible to her than any
+thing had yet been, except those of the wolf, which she had now
+forgotten. Then again, he was such a delightful playfellow, that so
+long as she neither lost her temper, nor went against orders, she might
+do almost any thing she pleased with him. In fact, such was his
+influence upon her, that she who had scoffed at the wisest woman in the
+whole world, and derided the wishes of her own father and mother, came
+at length to regard this dog as a superior being, and to look up to him
+as well as love him. And this was best of all.
+
+The improvement upon her, in the course of a month, was plain. She had
+quite ceased to go into passions, and had actually begun to take a
+little interest in her work and try to do it well.
+
+Still, the change was mostly an outside one. I do not mean that she was
+pretending. Indeed she had never been given to pretence of any sort.
+But the change was not in HER, only in her mood. A second change of
+circumstances would have soon brought a second change of behavior; and,
+so long as that was possible, she continued the same sort of person she
+had always been. But if she had not gained much, a trifle had been
+gained for her: a little quietness and order of mind, and hence a
+somewhat greater possibility of the first idea of right arising in it,
+whereupon she would begin to see what a wretched creature she was, and
+must continue until she herself was right.
+
+Meantime the wise woman had been watching her when she least fancied
+it, and taking note of the change that was passing upon her. Out of the
+large eyes of a gentle sheep she had been watching her--a sheep that
+puzzled the shepherd; for every now and then she would appear in his
+flock, and he would catch sight of her two or three times in a day,
+sometimes for days together, yet he never saw her when he looked for
+her, and never when he counted the flock into the fold at night. He
+knew she was not one of his; but where could she come from, and where
+could she go to? For there was no other flock within many miles, and he
+never could get near enough to her to see whether or not she was
+marked. Nor was Prince of the least use to him for the unravelling of
+the mystery; for although, as often as he told him to fetch the strange
+sheep, he went bounding to her at once, it was only to lie down at her
+feet.
+
+At length, however, the wise woman had made up her mind, and after that
+the strange sheep no longer troubled the shepherd.
+
+As Rosamond improved, the shepherdess grew kinder. She gave her all
+Agnes's clothes, and began to treat her much more like a daughter.
+Hence she had a great deal of liberty after the little work required of
+her was over, and would often spend hours at a time with the shepherd,
+watching the sheep and the dogs, and learning a little from seeing how
+Prince, and the others as well, managed their charge--how they never
+touched the sheep that did as they were told and turned when they were
+bid, but jumped on a disobedient flock, and ran along their backs,
+biting, and barking, and half choking themselves with mouthfuls of
+their wool.
+
+Then also she would play with the brooks, and learn their songs, and
+build bridges over them. And sometimes she would be seized with such
+delight of heart that she would spread out her arms to the wind, and go
+rushing up the hill till her breath left her, when she would tumble
+down in the heather, and lie there till it came back again.
+
+A noticeable change had by this time passed also on her countenance.
+Her coarse shapeless mouth had begun to show a glimmer of lines and
+curves about it, and the fat had not returned with the roses to her
+cheeks, so that her eyes looked larger than before; while, more
+noteworthy still, the bridge of her nose had grown higher, so that it
+was less of the impudent, insignificant thing inherited from a certain
+great-great-great-grandmother, who had little else to leave her. For a
+long time, it had fitted her very well, for it was just like her; but
+now there was ground for alteration, and already the granny who gave it
+her would not have recognized it. It was growing a little liker
+Prince's; and Prince's was a long, perceptive, sagacious nose,--one
+that was seldom mistaken.
+
+One day about noon, while the sheep were mostly lying down, and the
+shepherd, having left them to the care of the dogs, was himself
+stretched under the shade of a rock a little way apart, and the
+princess sat knitting, with Prince at her feet, lying in wait for a
+snap at a great fly, for even he had his follies--Rosamond saw a poor
+woman come toiling up the hill, but took little notice of her until she
+was passing, a few yards off, when she heard her utter the dog's name
+in a low voice.
+
+Immediately on the summons, Prince started up and followed her--with
+hanging head, but gently-wagging tail. At first the princess thought he
+was merely taking observations, and consulting with his nose whether
+she was respectable or not, but she soon saw that he was following her
+in meek submission. Then she sprung to her feet and cried, "Prince,
+Prince!" But Prince only turned his head and gave her an odd look, as
+if he were trying to smile, and could not. Then the princess grew
+angry, and ran after him, shouting, "Prince, come here directly." Again
+Prince turned his head, but this time to growl and show his teeth.
+
+The princess flew into one of her forgotten rages, and picking up a
+stone, flung it at the woman. Prince turned and darted at her, with
+fury in his eyes, and his white teeth gleaming. At the awful sight the
+princess turned also, and would have fled, but he was upon her in a
+moment, and threw her to the ground, and there she lay.
+
+It was evening when she came to herself. A cool twilight wind, that
+somehow seemed to come all the way from the stars, was blowing upon
+her. The poor woman and Prince, the shepherd and his sheep, were all
+gone, and she was left alone with the wind upon the heather.
+
+She felt sad, weak, and, perhaps, for the first time in her life, a
+little ashamed. The violence of which she had been guilty had vanished
+from her spirit, and now lay in her memory with the calm morning behind
+it, while in front the quiet dusky night was now closing in the loud
+shame betwixt a double peace. Between the two her passion looked ugly.
+It pained her to remember. She felt it was hateful, and HERS.
+
+But, alas, Prince was gone! That horrid woman had taken him away! The
+fury rose again in her heart, and raged--until it came to her mind how
+her dear Prince would have flown at her throat if he had seen her in
+such a passion. The memory calmed her, and she rose and went home.
+There, perhaps, she would find Prince, for surely he could never have
+been such a silly dog as go away altogether with a strange woman!
+
+She opened the door and went in. Dogs were asleep all about the
+cottage, it seemed to her, but nowhere was Prince. She crept away to
+her little bed, and cried herself asleep.
+
+In the morning the shepherd and shepherdess were indeed glad to find
+she had come home, for they thought she had run away.
+
+"Where is Prince?" she cried, the moment she waked.
+
+"His mistress has taken him," answered the shepherd.
+
+"Was that woman his mistress?"
+
+"I fancy so. He followed her as if he had known her all his life. I am
+very sorry to lose him, though."
+
+The poor woman had gone close past the rock where the shepherd lay. He
+saw her coming, and thought of the strange sheep which had been feeding
+beside him when he lay down. "Who can she be?" he said to himself; but
+when he noted how Prince followed her, without even looking up at him
+as he passed, he remembered how Prince had come to him. And this was
+how: as he lay in bed one fierce winter morning, just about to rise, he
+heard the voice of a woman call to him through the storm, "Shepherd, I
+have brought you a dog. Be good to him. I will come again and fetch him
+away." He dressed as quickly as he could, and went to the door. It was
+half snowed up, but on the top of the white mound before it stood
+Prince. And now he had gone as mysteriously as he had come, and he felt
+sad.
+
+Rosamond was very sorry too, and hence when she saw the looks of the
+shepherd and shepherdess, she was able to understand them. And she
+tried for a while to behave better to them because of their sorrow. So
+the loss of the dog brought them all nearer to each other.
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+
+After the thunder-storm, Agnes did not meet with a single obstruction
+or misadventure. Everybody was strangely polite, gave her whatever she
+desired, and answered her questions, but asked none in return, and
+looked all the time as if her departure would be a relief. They were
+afraid, in fact, from her appearance, lest she should tell them that
+she was lost, when they would be bound, on pain of public execution, to
+take her to the palace.
+
+But no sooner had she entered the city than she saw it would hardly do
+to present herself as a lost child at the palace-gates; for how were
+they to know that she was not an impostor, especially since she really
+was one, having run away from the wise woman? So she wandered about
+looking at every thing until she was tired, and bewildered by the noise
+and confusion all around her. The wearier she got, the more was she
+pushed in every direction. Having been used to a whole hill to wander
+upon, she was very awkward in the crowded streets, and often on the
+point of being run over by the horses, which seemed to her to be going
+every way like a frightened flock. She spoke to several persons, but no
+one stopped to answer her; and at length, her courage giving way, she
+felt lost indeed, and began to cry. A soldier saw her, and asked what
+was the matter.
+
+"I've nowhere to go to," she sobbed.
+
+"Where's your mother?" asked the soldier.
+
+"I don't know," answered Agnes. "I was carried off by an old woman, who
+then went away and left me. I don't know where she is, or where I am
+myself."
+
+"Come," said the soldier, "this is a case for his Majesty."
+
+So saying, he took her by the hand, led her to the palace, and begged
+an audience of the king and queen. The porter glanced at Agnes,
+immediately admitted them, and showed them into a great splendid room,
+where the king and queen sat every day to review lost children, in the
+hope of one day thus finding their Rosamond. But they were by this time
+beginning to get tired of it. The moment they cast their eyes upon
+Agnes, the queen threw back her head, threw up her hands, and cried,
+"What a miserable, conceited, white-faced little ape!" and the king
+turned upon the soldier in wrath, and cried, forgetting his own decree,
+"What do you mean by bringing such a dirty, vulgar-looking, pert
+creature into my palace? The dullest soldier in my army could never for
+a moment imagine a child like THAT, one hair's-breadth like the lovely
+angel we lost!"
+
+"I humbly beg your Majesty's pardon," said the soldier, "but what was I
+to do? There stands your Majesty's proclamation in gold letters on the
+brazen gates of the palace."
+
+"I shall have it taken down," said the king. "Remove the child."
+
+"Please your Majesty, what am I to do with her?"
+
+"Take her home with you."
+
+"I have six already, sire, and do not want her."
+
+"Then drop her where you picked her up."
+
+"If I do, sire, some one else will find her and bring her back to your
+Majesties."
+
+"That will never do," said the king. "I cannot bear to look at her."
+
+"For all her ugliness," said the queen, "she is plainly lost, and so is
+our Rosamond."
+
+"It may be only a pretence, to get into the palace," said the king.
+
+"Take her to the head scullion, soldier," said the queen, "and tell her
+to make her useful. If she should find out she has been pretending to
+be lost, she must let me know."
+
+The soldier was so anxious to get rid of her, that he caught her up in
+his arms, hurried her from the room, found his way to the scullery, and
+gave her, trembling with fear, in charge to the head maid, with the
+queen's message.
+
+As it was evident that the queen had no favor for her, the servants did
+as they pleased with her, and often treated her harshly. Not one
+amongst them liked her, nor was it any wonder, seeing that, with every
+step she took from the wise woman's house, she had grown more
+contemptible, for she had grown more conceited. Every civil answer
+given her, she attributed to the impression she made, not to the desire
+to get rid of her; and every kindness, to approbation of her looks and
+speech, instead of friendliness to a lonely child. Hence by this time
+she was twice as odious as before; for whoever has had such severe
+treatment as the wise woman gave her, and is not the better for it,
+always grows worse than before. They drove her about, boxed her ears on
+the smallest provocation, laid every thing to her charge, called her
+all manner of contemptuous names, jeered and scoffed at her
+awkwardnesses, and made her life so miserable that she was in a fair
+way to forget every thing she had learned, and know nothing but how to
+clean saucepans and kettles.
+
+They would not have been so hard upon her, however, but for her
+irritating behavior. She dared not refuse to do as she was told, but
+she obeyed now with a pursed-up mouth, and now with a contemptuous
+smile. The only thing that sustained her was her constant contriving
+how to get out of the painful position in which she found herself.
+There is but one true way, however, of getting out of any position we
+may be in, and that is, to do the work of it so well that we grow fit
+for a better: I need not say this was not the plan upon which Agnes was
+cunning enough to fix.
+
+She had soon learned from the talk around her the reason of the
+proclamation which had brought her hither.
+
+"Was the lost princess so very beautiful?" she said one day to the
+youngest of her fellow-servants.
+
+"Beautiful!" screamed the maid; "she was just the ugliest little toad
+you ever set eyes upon."
+
+"What was she like?" asked Agnes.
+
+"She was about your size, and quite as ugly, only not in the same way;
+for she had red cheeks, and a cocked little nose, and the biggest,
+ugliest mouth you ever saw."
+
+Agnes fell a-thinking.
+
+"Is there a picture of her anywhere in the palace?" she asked.
+
+"How should I know? You can ask a housemaid."
+
+Agnes soon learned that there was one, and contrived to get a peep of
+it. Then she was certain of what she had suspected from the description
+given of her, namely, that she was the same she had seen in the picture
+at the wise woman's house. The conclusion followed, that the lost
+princess must be staying with her father and mother, for assuredly in
+the picture she wore one of her frocks.
+
+She went to the head scullion, and with humble manner, but proud heart,
+begged her to procure for her the favor of a word with the queen.
+
+"A likely thing indeed!" was the answer, accompanied by a resounding
+box on the ear.
+
+She tried the head cook next, but with no better success, and so was
+driven to her meditations again, the result of which was that she began
+to drop hints that she knew something about the princess. This came at
+length to the queen's ears, and she sent for her.
+
+Absorbed in her own selfish ambitions, Agnes never thought of the risk
+to which she was about to expose her parents, but told the queen that
+in her wanderings she had caught sight of just such a lovely creature
+as she described the princess, only dressed like a peasant--saying,
+that, if the king would permit her to go and look for her, she had
+little doubt of bringing her back safe and sound within a few weeks.
+
+But although she spoke the truth, she had such a look of cunning on her
+pinched face, that the queen could not possibly trust her, but believed
+that she made the proposal merely to get away, and have money given her
+for her journey. Still there was a chance, and she would not say any
+thing until she had consulted the king.
+
+Then they had Agnes up before the lord chancellor, who, after much
+questioning of her, arrived at last, he thought, at some notion of the
+part of the country described by her--that was, if she spoke the truth,
+which, from her looks and behavior, he also considered entirely
+doubtful. Thereupon she was ordered back to the kitchen, and a band of
+soldiers, under a clever lawyer, sent out to search every foot of the
+supposed region. They were commanded not to return until they brought
+with them, bound hand and foot, such a shepherd pair as that of which
+they received a full description.
+
+And now Agnes was worse off than before. For to her other miseries was
+added the fear of what would befall her when it was discovered that the
+persons of whom they were in quest, and whom she was certain they must
+find, were her own father and mother.
+
+By this time the king and queen were so tired of seeing lost children,
+genuine or pretended--for they cared for no child any longer than there
+seemed a chance of its turning out their child--that with this new
+hope, which, however poor and vague at first, soon began to grow upon
+such imaginations as they had, they commanded the proclamation to be
+taken down from the palace gates, and directed the various sentries to
+admit no child whatever, lost or found, be the reason or pretence what
+it might, until further orders.
+
+"I'm sick of children!" said the king to his secretary, as he finished
+dictating the direction.
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+
+After Prince was gone, the princess, by degrees, fell back into some of
+her bad old ways, from which only the presence of the dog, not her own
+betterment, had kept her. She never grew nearly so selfish again, but
+she began to let her angry old self lift up its head once more, until
+by and by she grew so bad that the shepherdess declared she should not
+stop in the house a day longer, for she was quite unendurable.
+
+"It is all very well for you, husband," she said, "for you haven't her
+all day about you, and only see the best of her. But if you had her in
+work instead of play hours, you would like her no better than I do. And
+then it's not her ugly passions only, but when she's in one of her
+tantrums, it's impossible to get any work out of her. At such times
+she's just as obstinate as--as--as"--
+
+She was going to say "as Agnes," but the feelings of a mother overcame
+her, and she could not utter the words.
+
+"In fact," she said instead, "she makes my life miserable."
+
+The shepherd felt he had no right to tell his wife she must submit to
+have her life made miserable, and therefore, although he was really
+much attached to Rosamond, he would not interfere; and the shepherdess
+told her she must look out for another place.
+
+The princess was, however, this much better than before, even in
+respect of her passions, that they were not quite so bad, and after one
+was over, she was really ashamed of it. But not once, ever since the
+departure of Prince had she tried to check the rush of the evil temper
+when it came upon her. She hated it when she was out of it, and that
+was something; but while she was in it, she went full swing with it
+wherever the prince of the power of it pleased to carry her. Nor was
+this all: although she might by this time have known well enough that
+as soon as she was out of it she was certain to be ashamed of it, she
+would yet justify it to herself with twenty different arguments that
+looked very good at the time, but would have looked very poor indeed
+afterwards, if then she had ever remembered them.
+
+She was not sorry to leave the shepherd's cottage, for she felt certain
+of soon finding her way back to her father and mother; and she would,
+indeed, have set out long before, but that her foot had somehow got
+hurt when Prince gave her his last admonition, and she had never since
+been able for long walks, which she sometimes blamed as the cause of
+her temper growing worse. But if people are good-tempered only when
+they are comfortable, what thanks have they?--Her foot was now much
+better; and as soon as the shepherdess had thus spoken, she resolved to
+set out at once, and work or beg her way home. At the moment she was
+quite unmindful of what she owed the good people, and, indeed, was as
+yet incapable of understanding a tenth part of her obligation to them.
+So she bade them good by without a tear, and limped her way down the
+hill, leaving the shepherdess weeping, and the shepherd looking very
+grave.
+
+When she reached the valley she followed the course of the stream,
+knowing only that it would lead her away from the hill where the sheep
+fed, into richer lands where were farms and cattle. Rounding one of the
+roots of the hill she saw before her a poor woman walking slowly along
+the road with a burden of heather upon her back, and presently passed
+her, but had gone only a few paces farther when she heard her calling
+after her in a kind old voice--
+
+"Your shoe-tie is loose, my child."
+
+But Rosamond was growing tired, for her foot had become painful, and so
+she was cross, and neither returned answer, nor paid heed to the
+warning. For when we are cross, all our other faults grow busy, and
+poke up their ugly heads like maggots, and the princess's old dislike
+to doing any thing that came to her with the least air of advice about
+it returned in full force.
+
+"My child," said the woman again, "if you don't fasten your shoe-tie,
+it will make you fall."
+
+"Mind your own business," said Rosamond, without even turning her head,
+and had not gone more than three steps when she fell flat on her face
+on the path. She tried to get up, but the effort forced from her a
+scream, for she had sprained the ankle of the foot that was already
+lame.
+
+The old woman was by her side instantly.
+
+"Where are you hurt, child?" she asked, throwing down her burden and
+kneeling beside her.
+
+"Go away," screamed Rosamond. "YOU made me fall, you bad woman!"
+
+The woman made no reply, but began to feel her joints, and soon
+discovered the sprain. Then, in spite of Rosamond's abuse, and the
+violent pushes and even kicks she gave her, she took the hurt ankle in
+her hands, and stroked and pressed it, gently kneading it, as it were,
+with her thumbs, as if coaxing every particle of the muscles into its
+right place. Nor had she done so long before Rosamond lay still. At
+length she ceased, and said:--
+
+"Now, my child, you may get up."
+
+"I can't get up, and I'm not your child," cried Rosamond. "Go away."
+
+Without another word the woman left her, took up her burden, and
+continued her journey.
+
+In a little while Rosamond tried to get up, and not only succeeded, but
+found she could walk, and, indeed, presently discovered that her ankle
+and foot also were now perfectly well.
+
+"I wasn't much hurt after all," she said to herself, nor sent a single
+grateful thought after the poor woman, whom she speedily passed once
+more upon the road without even a greeting.
+
+Late in the afternoon she came to a spot where the path divided into
+two, and was taking the one she liked the look of better, when she
+started at the sound of the poor woman's voice, whom she thought she
+had left far behind, again calling her. She looked round, and there she
+was, toiling under her load of heather as before.
+
+"You are taking the wrong turn, child." she cried.
+
+"How can you tell that?" said Rosamond. "You know nothing about where I
+want to go."
+
+"I know that road will take you where you won't want to go," said the
+woman.
+
+"I shall know when I get there, then," returned Rosamond, "and no
+thanks to you."
+
+She set off running. The woman took the other path, and was soon out of
+sight.
+
+By and by, Rosamond found herself in the midst of a peat-moss--a flat,
+lonely, dismal, black country. She thought, however, that the road
+would soon lead her across to the other side of it among the farms, and
+went on without anxiety. But the stream, which had hitherto been her
+guide, had now vanished; and when it began to grow dark, Rosamond found
+that she could no longer distinguish the track. She turned, therefore,
+but only to find that the same darkness covered it behind as well as
+before. Still she made the attempt to go back by keeping as direct a
+line as she could, for the path was straight as an arrow. But she could
+not see enough even to start her in a line, and she had not gone far
+before she found herself hemmed in, apparently on every side, by
+ditches and pools of black, dismal, slimy water. And now it was so dark
+that she could see nothing more than the gleam of a bit of clear sky
+now and then in the water. Again and again she stepped knee-deep in
+black mud, and once tumbled down in the shallow edge of a terrible
+pool; after which she gave up the attempt to escape the meshes of the
+watery net, stood still, and began to cry bitterly, despairingly. She
+saw now that her unreasonable anger had made her foolish as well as
+rude, and felt that she was justly punished for her wickedness to the
+poor woman who had been so friendly to her. What would Prince think of
+her, if he knew? She cast herself on the ground, hungry, and cold, and
+weary.
+
+Presently, she thought she saw long creatures come heaving out of the
+black pools. A toad jumped upon her, and she shrieked, and sprang to
+her feet, and would have run away headlong, when she spied in the
+distance a faint glimmer. She thought it was a Will-o'-the-wisp. What
+could he be after? Was he looking for her? She dared not run, lest he
+should see and pounce upon her. The light came nearer, and grew
+brighter and larger. Plainly, the little fiend was looking for her--he
+would torment her. After many twistings and turnings among the pools,
+it came straight towards her, and she would have shrieked, but that
+terror made her dumb.
+
+It came nearer and nearer, and lo! it was borne by a dark figure, with
+a burden on its back: it was the poor woman, and no demon, that was
+looking for her! She gave a scream of joy, fell down weeping at her
+feet, and clasped her knees. Then the poor woman threw away her burden,
+laid down her lantern, took the princess up in her arms, folded her
+cloak around her, and having taken up her lantern again, carried her
+slowly and carefully through the midst of the black pools, winding
+hither and thither. All night long she carried her thus, slowly and
+wearily, until at length the darkness grew a little thinner, an
+uncertain hint of light came from the east, and the poor woman,
+stopping on the brow of a little hill, opened her cloak, and set the
+princess down.
+
+"I can carry you no farther," she said. "Sit there on the grass till
+the light comes. I will stand here by you."
+
+Rosamond had been asleep. Now she rubbed her eyes and looked, but it
+was too dark to see any thing more than that there was a sky over her
+head. Slowly the light grew, until she could see the form of the poor
+woman standing in front of her; and as it went on growing, she began to
+think she had seen her somewhere before, till all at once she thought
+of the wise woman, and saw it must be she. Then she was so ashamed that
+she bent down her head, and could look at her no longer. But the poor
+woman spoke, and the voice was that of the wise woman, and every word
+went deep into the heart of the princess.
+
+"Rosamond," she said, "all this time, ever since I carried you from
+your father's palace, I have been doing what I could to make you a
+lovely creature: ask yourself how far I have succeeded."
+
+All her past story, since she found herself first under the wise
+woman's cloak, arose, and glided past the inner eyes of the princess,
+and she saw, and in a measure understood, it all. But she sat with her
+eyes on the ground, and made no sign.
+
+Then said the wise woman:--
+
+"Below there is the forest which surrounds my house. I am going home.
+If you pledge to come there to me, I will help you, in a way I could
+not do now, to be good and lovely. I will wait you there all day, but
+if you start at once, you may be there long before noon. I shall have
+your breakfast waiting for you. One thing more: the beasts have not yet
+all gone home to their holes; but I give you my word, not one will
+touch you so long as you keep coming nearer to my house."
+
+She ceased. Rosamond sat waiting to hear something more; but nothing
+came. She looked up; she was alone.
+
+Alone once more! Always being left alone, because she would not yield
+to what was right! Oh, how safe she had felt under the wise woman's
+cloak! She had indeed been good to her, and she had in return behaved
+like one of the hyenas of the awful wood! What a wonderful house it was
+she lived in! And again all her own story came up into her brain from
+her repentant heart.
+
+"Why didn't she take me with her?" she said. "I would have gone
+gladly." And she wept. But her own conscience told her that, in the
+very middle of her shame and desire to be good, she had returned no
+answer to the words of the wise woman; she had sat like a tree-stump,
+and done nothing. She tried to say there was nothing to be done; but
+she knew at once that she could have told the wise woman she had been
+very wicked, and asked her to take her with her. Now there was nothing
+to be done.
+
+"Nothing to be done!" said her conscience. "Cannot you rise, and walk
+down the hill, and through the wood?"
+
+"But the wild beasts!"
+
+"There it is! You don't believe the wise woman yet! Did she not tell
+you the beasts would not touch you?"
+
+"But they are so horrid!"
+
+"Yes, they are; but it would be far better to be eaten up alive by them
+than live on--such a worthless creature as you are. Why, you're not fit
+to be thought about by any but bad ugly creatures."
+
+This was how herself talked to her.
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+
+All at once she jumped to her feet, and ran at full speed down the hill
+and into the wood. She heard howlings and yellings on all sides of her,
+but she ran straight on, as near as she could judge. Her spirits rose
+as she ran. Suddenly she saw before her, in the dusk of the thick wood,
+a group of some dozen wolves and hyenas, standing all together right in
+her way, with their green eyes fixed upon her staring. She faltered one
+step, then bethought her of what the wise woman had promised, and
+keeping straight on, dashed right into the middle of them. They fled
+howling, as if she had struck them with fire. She was no more afraid
+after that, and ere the sun was up she was out of the wood and upon the
+heath, which no bad thing could step upon and live. With the first peep
+of the sun above the horizon, she saw the little cottage before her,
+and ran as fast as she could run towards it, When she came near it, she
+saw that the door was open, and ran straight into the outstretched arms
+of the wise woman.
+
+The wise woman kissed her and stroked her hair, set her down by the
+fire, and gave her a bowl of bread and milk.
+
+When she had eaten it she drew her before her where she sat, and spoke
+to her thus:--
+
+"Rosamond, if you would be a blessed creature instead of a mere wretch,
+you must submit to be tried."
+
+"Is that something terrible?" asked the princess, turning white.
+
+"No, my child; but it is something very difficult to come well out of.
+Nobody who has not been tried knows how difficult it is; but whoever
+has come well out of it, and those who do not overcome never do come
+out of it, always looks back with horror, not on what she has come
+through, but on the very idea of the possibility of having failed, and
+being still the same miserable creature as before."
+
+"You will tell me what it is before it begins?" said the princess.
+
+"I will not tell you exactly. But I will tell you some things to help
+you. One great danger is that perhaps you will think you are in it
+before it has really begun, and say to yourself, 'Oh! this is really
+nothing to me. It may be a trial to some, but for me I am sure it is
+not worth mentioning.' And then, before you know, it will be upon you,
+and you will fail utterly and shamefully."
+
+"I will be very, very careful," said the princess. "Only don't let me
+be frightened."
+
+"You shall not be frightened, except it be your own doing. You are
+already a brave girl, and there is no occasion to try you more that
+way. I saw how you rushed into the middle of the ugly creatures; and as
+they ran from you, so will all kinds of evil things, as long as you
+keep them outside of you, and do not open the cottage of your heart to
+let them in. I will tell you something more about what you will have to
+go through.
+
+"Nobody can be a real princess--do not imagine you have yet been any
+thing more than a mock one--until she is a princess over herself, that
+is, until, when she finds herself unwilling to do the thing that is
+right, she makes herself do it. So long as any mood she is in makes her
+do the thing she will be sorry for when that mood is over, she is a
+slave, and no princess. A princess is able to do what is right even
+should she unhappily be in a mood that would make another unable to do
+it. For instance, if you should be cross and angry, you are not a whit
+the less bound to be just, yes, kind even--a thing most difficult in
+such a mood--though ease itself in a good mood, loving and sweet.
+Whoever does what she is bound to do, be she the dirtiest little girl
+in the street, is a princess, worshipful, honorable. Nay, more; her
+might goes farther than she could send it, for if she act so, the evil
+mood will wither and die, and leave her loving and clean.--Do you
+understand me, dear Rosamond?"
+
+As she spoke, the wise woman laid her hand on her head and looked--oh,
+so lovingly!--into her eyes.
+
+"I am not sure," said the princess, humbly.
+
+"Perhaps you will understand me better if I say it just comes to this,
+that you must NOT DO what is wrong, however much you are inclined to do
+it, and you must DO what is right, however much you are disinclined to
+do it."
+
+"I understand that," said the princess.
+
+"I am going, then, to put you in one of the mood-chambers of which I
+have many in the house. Its mood will come upon you, and you will have
+to deal with it."
+
+She rose and took her by the hand. The princess trembled a little, but
+never thought of resisting.
+
+The wise woman led her into the great hall with the pictures, and
+through a door at the farther end, opening upon another large hall,
+which was circular, and had doors close to each other all round it. Of
+these she opened one, pushed the princess gently in, and closed it
+behind her.
+
+The princess found herself in her old nursery. Her little white rabbit
+came to meet her in a lumping canter as if his back were going to
+tumble over his head. Her nurse, in her rocking-chair by the chimney
+corner, sat just as she had used. The fire burned brightly, and on the
+table were many of her wonderful toys, on which, however, she now
+looked with some contempt. Her nurse did not seem at all surprised to
+see her, any more than if the princess had but just gone from the room
+and returned again.
+
+"Oh! how different I am from what I used to be!" thought the princess
+to herself, looking from her toys to her nurse. "The wise woman has
+done me so much good already! I will go and see mamma at once, and tell
+her I am very glad to be at home again, and very sorry I was so
+naughty."
+
+She went towards the door.
+
+"Your queen-mamma, princess, cannot see you now," said her nurse.
+
+"I have yet to learn that it is my part to take orders from a servant,"
+said the princess with temper and dignity.
+
+"I beg your pardon, princess," returned her nurse, politely; "but it is
+my duty to tell you that your queen-mamma is at this moment engaged.
+She is alone with her most intimate friend, the Princess of the Frozen
+Regions."
+
+"I shall see for myself," returned the princess, bridling, and walked
+to the door.
+
+Now little bunny, leap-frogging near the door, happened that moment to
+get about her feet, just as she was going to open it, so that she
+tripped and fell against it, striking her forehead a good blow. She
+caught up the rabbit in a rage, and, crying, "It is all your fault, you
+ugly old wretch!" threw it with violence in her nurse's face.
+
+Her nurse caught the rabbit, and held it to her face, as if seeking to
+sooth its fright. But the rabbit looked very limp and odd, and, to her
+amazement, Rosamond presently saw that the thing was no rabbit, but a
+pocket-handkerchief. The next moment she removed it from her face, and
+Rosamond beheld--not her nurse, but the wise woman--standing on her own
+hearth, while she herself stood by the door leading from the cottage
+into the hall.
+
+"First trial a failure," said the wise woman quietly.
+
+Overcome with shame, Rosamond ran to her, fell down on her knees, and
+hid her face in her dress.
+
+"Need I say any thing?" said the wise woman, stroking her hair.
+
+"No, no," cried the princess. "I am horrid."
+
+"You know now the kind of thing you have to meet: are you ready to try
+again?"
+
+"MAY I try again?" cried the princess, jumping up. "I'm ready. I do not
+think I shall fail this time."
+
+"The trial will be harder."
+
+Rosamond drew in her breath, and set her teeth. The wise woman looked
+at her pitifully, but took her by the hand, led her to the round hall,
+opened the same door, and closed it after her.
+
+The princess expected to find herself again in the nursery, but in the
+wise woman's house no one ever has the same trial twice. She was in a
+beautiful garden, full of blossoming trees and the loveliest roses and
+lilies. A lake was in the middle of it, with a tiny boat. So delightful
+was it that Rosamond forgot all about how or why she had come there,
+and lost herself in the joy of the flowers and the trees and the water.
+Presently came the shout of a child, merry and glad, and from a clump
+of tulip trees rushed a lovely little boy, with his arms stretched out
+to her. She was charmed at the sight, ran to meet him, caught him up in
+her arms, kissed him, and could hardly let him go again. But the moment
+she set him down he ran from her towards the lake, looking back as he
+ran, and crying "Come, come."
+
+She followed. He made straight for the boat, clambered into it, and
+held out his hand to help her in. Then he caught up the little
+boat-hook, and pushed away from the shore: there was a great white
+flower floating a few yards off, and that was the little fellow's goal.
+But, alas! no sooner had Rosamond caught sight of it, huge and glowing
+as a harvest moon, than she felt a great desire to have it herself. The
+boy, however, was in the bows of the boat, and caught it first. It had
+a long stem, reaching down to the bottom of the water, and for a moment
+he tugged at it in vain, but at last it gave way so suddenly, that he
+tumbled back with the flower into the bottom of the boat. Then
+Rosamond, almost wild at the danger it was in as he struggled to rise,
+hurried to save it, but somehow between them it came in pieces, and all
+its petals of fretted silver were scattered about the boat. When the
+boy got up, and saw the ruin his companion had occasioned, he burst
+into tears, and having the long stalk of the flower still in his hand,
+struck her with it across the face. It did not hurt her much, for he
+was a very little fellow, but it was wet and slimy. She tumbled rather
+than rushed at him, seized him in her arms, tore him from his
+frightened grasp, and flung him into the water. His head struck on the
+boat as he fell, and he sank at once to the bottom, where he lay
+looking up at her with white face and open eyes.
+
+The moment she saw the consequences of her deed she was filled with
+horrible dismay. She tried hard to reach down to him through the water,
+but it was far deeper than it looked, and she could not. Neither could
+she get her eyes to leave the white face: its eyes fascinated and fixed
+hers; and there she lay leaning over the boat and staring at the death
+she had made. But a voice crying, "Ally! Ally!" shot to her heart, and
+springing to her feet she saw a lovely lady come running down the grass
+to the brink of the water with her hair flying about her head.
+
+"Where is my Ally?" she shrieked.
+
+But Rosamond could not answer, and only stared at the lady, as she had
+before stared at her drowned boy.
+
+Then the lady caught sight of the dead thing at the bottom of the
+water, and rushed in, and, plunging down, struggled and groped until
+she reached it. Then she rose and stood up with the dead body of her
+little son in her arms, his head hanging back, and the water streaming
+from him.
+
+"See what you have made of him, Rosamond!" she said, holding the body
+out to her; "and this is your second trial, and also a failure."
+
+The dead child melted away from her arms, and there she stood, the wise
+woman, on her own hearth, while Rosamond found herself beside the
+little well on the floor of the cottage, with one arm wet up to the
+shoulder. She threw herself on the heather-bed and wept from relief and
+vexation both.
+
+The wise woman walked out of the cottage, shut the door, and left her
+alone. Rosamond was sobbing, so that she did not hear her go. When at
+length she looked up, and saw that the wise woman was gone, her misery
+returned afresh and tenfold, and she wept and wailed. The hours passed,
+the shadows of evening began to fall, and the wise woman entered.
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+
+She went straight to the bed, and taking Rosamond in her arms, sat down
+with her by the fire.
+
+"My poor child!" she said. "Two terrible failures! And the more the
+harder! They get stronger and stronger. What is to be done?"
+
+"Couldn't you help me?" said Rosamond piteously.
+
+"Perhaps I could, now you ask me," answered the wise woman. "When you
+are ready to try again, we shall see."
+
+"I am very tired of myself," said the princess. "But I can't rest till
+I try again."
+
+"That is the only way to get rid of your weary, shadowy self, and find
+your strong, true self. Come, my child; I will help you all I can, for
+now I CAN help you."
+
+Yet again she led her to the same door, and seemed to the princess to
+send her yet again alone into the room. She was in a forest, a place
+half wild, half tended. The trees were grand, and full of the loveliest
+birds, of all glowing gleaming and radiant colors, which, unlike the
+brilliant birds we know in our world, sang deliciously, every one
+according to his color. The trees were not at all crowded, but their
+leaves were so thick, and their boughs spread so far, that it was only
+here and there a sunbeam could get straight through. All the gentle
+creatures of a forest were there, but no creatures that killed, not
+even a weasel to kill the rabbits, or a beetle to eat the snails out of
+their striped shells. As to the butterflies, words would but wrong them
+if they tried to tell how gorgeous they were. The princess's delight
+was so great that she neither laughed nor ran, but walked about with a
+solemn countenance and stately step.
+
+"But where are the flowers?" she said to herself at length.
+
+They were nowhere. Neither on the high trees, nor on the few shrubs
+that grew here and there amongst them, were there any blossoms; and in
+the grass that grew everywhere there was not a single flower to be seen.
+
+"Ah, well!" said Rosamond again to herself, "where all the birds and
+butterflies are living flowers, we can do without the other sort."
+
+Still she could not help feeling that flowers were wanted to make the
+beauty of the forest complete.
+
+Suddenly she came out on a little open glade; and there, on the root of
+a great oak, sat the loveliest little girl, with her lap full of
+flowers of all colors, but of such kinds as Rosamond had never before
+seen. She was playing with them--burying her hands in them, tumbling
+them about, and every now and then picking one from the rest, and
+throwing it away. All the time she never smiled, except with her eyes,
+which were as full as they could hold of the laughter of the spirit--a
+laughter which in this world is never heard, only sets the eyes alight
+with a liquid shining. Rosamond drew nearer, for the wonderful creature
+would have drawn a tiger to her side, and tamed him on the way. A few
+yards from her, she came upon one of her cast-away flowers and stooped
+to pick it up, as well she might where none grew save in her own
+longing. But to her amazement she found, instead of a flower thrown
+away to wither, one fast rooted and quite at home. She left it, and
+went to another; but it also was fast in the soil, and growing
+comfortably in the warm grass. What could it mean? One after another
+she tried, until at length she was satisfied that it was the same with
+every flower the little girl threw from her lap.
+
+She watched then until she saw her throw one, and instantly bounded to
+the spot. But the flower had been quicker than she: there it grew, fast
+fixed in the earth, and, she thought, looked at her roguishly.
+Something evil moved in her, and she plucked it.
+
+"Don't! don't!" cried the child. "My flowers cannot live in your hands."
+
+Rosamond looked at the flower. It was withered already. She threw it
+from her, offended. The child rose, with difficulty keeping her lapful
+together, picked it up, carried it back, sat down again, spoke to it,
+kissed it, sang to it--oh! such a sweet, childish little song!--the
+princess never could recall a word of it--and threw it away. Up rose
+its little head, and there it was, busy growing again!
+
+Rosamond's bad temper soon gave way: the beauty and sweetness of the
+child had overcome it; and, anxious to make friends with her, she drew
+near, and said:
+
+"Won't you give me a little flower, please, you beautiful child?"
+
+"There they are; they are all for you," answered the child, pointing
+with her outstretched arm and forefinger all round.
+
+"But you told me, a minute ago, not to touch them."
+
+"Yes, indeed, I did."
+
+"They can't be mine, if I'm not to touch them."
+
+"If, to call them yours, you must kill them, then they are not yours,
+and never, never can be yours. They are nobody's when they are dead."
+
+"But you don't kill them."
+
+"I don't pull them; I throw them away. I live them."
+
+"How is it that you make them grow?"
+
+"I say, 'You darling!' and throw it away and there it is."
+
+"Where do you get them?"
+
+"In my lap."
+
+"I wish you would let me throw one away."
+
+"Have you got any in your lap? Let me see."
+
+"No; I have none."
+
+"Then you can't throw one away, if you haven't got one."
+
+"You are mocking me!" cried the princess.
+
+"I am not mocking you," said the child, looking her full in the face,
+with reproach in her large blue eyes.
+
+"Oh, that's where the flowers come from!" said the princess to herself,
+the moment she saw them, hardly knowing what she meant.
+
+Then the child rose as if hurt, and quickly threw away all the flowers
+she had in her lap, but one by one, and without any sign of anger. When
+they were all gone, she stood a moment, and then, in a kind of chanting
+cry, called, two or three times, "Peggy! Peggy! Peggy!"
+
+A low, glad cry, like the whinny of a horse, answered, and, presently,
+out of the wood on the opposite side of the glade, came gently trotting
+the loveliest little snow-white pony, with great shining blue wings,
+half-lifted from his shoulders. Straight towards the little girl,
+neither hurrying nor lingering, he trotted with light elastic tread.
+
+Rosamond's love for animals broke into a perfect passion of delight at
+the vision. She rushed to meet the pony with such haste, that, although
+clearly the best trained animal under the sun, he started back,
+plunged, reared, and struck out with his fore-feet ere he had time to
+observe what sort of a creature it was that had so startled him. When
+he perceived it was a little girl, he dropped instantly upon all fours,
+and content with avoiding her, resumed his quiet trot in the direction
+of his mistress. Rosamond stood gazing after him in miserable
+disappointment.
+
+When he reached the child, he laid his head on her shoulder, and she
+put her arm up round his neck; and after she had talked to him a
+little, he turned and came trotting back to the princess.
+
+Almost beside herself with joy, she began caressing him in the rough
+way which, not-withstanding her love for them, she was in the habit of
+using with animals; and she was not gentle enough, in herself even, to
+see that he did not like it, and was only putting up with it for the
+sake of his mistress. But when, that she might jump upon his back, she
+laid hold of one of his wings, and ruffled some of the blue feathers,
+he wheeled suddenly about, gave his long tail a sharp whisk which threw
+her flat on the grass, and, trotting back to his mistress, bent down
+his head before her as if asking excuse for ridding himself of the
+unbearable.
+
+The princess was furious. She had forgotten all her past life up to the
+time when she first saw the child: her beauty had made her forget, and
+yet she was now on the very borders of hating her. What she might have
+done, or rather tried to do, had not Peggy's tail struck her down with
+such force that for a moment she could not rise, I cannot tell.
+
+But while she lay half-stunned, her eyes fell on a little flower just
+under them. It stared up in her face like the living thing it was, and
+she could not take her eyes off its face. It was like a primrose trying
+to express doubt instead of confidence. It seemed to put her half in
+mind of something, and she felt as if shame were coming. She put out
+her hand to pluck it; but the moment her fingers touched it, the flower
+withered up, and hung as dead on its stalks as if a flame of fire had
+passed over it.
+
+Then a shudder thrilled through the heart of the princess, and she
+thought with herself, saying--"What sort of a creature am I that the
+flowers wither when I touch them, and the ponies despise me with their
+tails? What a wretched, coarse, ill-bred creature I must be! There is
+that lovely child giving life instead of death to the flowers, and a
+moment ago I was hating her! I am made horrid, and I shall be horrid,
+and I hate myself, and yet I can't help being myself!"
+
+She heard the sound of galloping feet, and there was the pony, with the
+child seated betwixt his wings, coming straight on at full speed for
+where she lay.
+
+"I don't care," she said. "They may trample me under their feet if they
+like. I am tired and sick of myself--a creature at whose touch the
+flowers wither!"
+
+On came the winged pony. But while yet some distance off, he gave a
+great bound, spread out his living sails of blue, rose yards and yards
+above her in the air, and alighted as gently as a bird, just a few feet
+on the other side of her. The child slipped down and came and kneeled
+over her.
+
+"Did my pony hurt you?" she said. "I am so sorry!"
+
+"Yes, he hurt me," answered the princess, "but not more than I
+deserved, for I took liberties with him, and he did not like it."
+
+"Oh, you dear!" said the little girl. "I love you for talking so of my
+Peggy. He is a good pony, though a little playful sometimes. Would you
+like a ride upon him?"
+
+"You darling beauty!" cried Rosamond, sobbing. "I do love you so, you
+are so good. How did you become so sweet?"
+
+"Would you like to ride my pony?" repeated the child, with a heavenly
+smile in her eyes.
+
+"No, no; he is fit only for you. My clumsy body would hurt him," said
+Rosamond.
+
+"You don't mind me having such a pony?" said the child.
+
+"What! mind it?" cried Rosamond, almost indignantly. Then remembering
+certain thoughts that had but a few moments before passed through her
+mind, she looked on the ground and was silent.
+
+"You don't mind it, then?" repeated the child.
+
+"I am very glad there is such a you and such a pony, and that such a
+you has got such a pony," said Rosamond, still looking on the ground.
+"But I do wish the flowers would not die when I touch them. I was cross
+to see you make them grow, but now I should be content if only I did
+not make them wither."
+
+As she spoke, she stroked the little girl's bare feet, which were by
+her, half buried in the soft moss, and as she ended she laid her cheek
+on them and kissed them.
+
+"Dear princess!" said the little girl, "the flowers will not always
+wither at your touch. Try now--only do not pluck it. Flowers ought
+never to be plucked except to give away. Touch it gently."
+
+A silvery flower, something like a snow-drop, grew just within her
+reach. Timidly she stretched out her hand and touched it. The flower
+trembled, but neither shrank nor withered.
+
+"Touch it again," said the child.
+
+It changed color a little, and Rosamond fancied it grew larger.
+
+"Touch it again," said the child.
+
+It opened and grew until it was as large as a narcissus, and changed
+and deepened in color till it was a red glowing gold.
+
+Rosamond gazed motionless. When the transfiguration of the flower was
+perfected, she sprang to her feet with clasped hands, but for very
+ecstasy of joy stood speechless, gazing at the child.
+
+"Did you never see me before, Rosamond?" she asked.
+
+"No, never," answered the princess. "I never saw any thing half so
+lovely."
+
+"Look at me," said the child.
+
+And as Rosamond looked, the child began, like the flower, to grow
+larger. Quickly through every gradation of growth she passed, until she
+stood before her a woman perfectly beautiful, neither old nor young;
+for hers was the old age of everlasting youth.
+
+Rosamond was utterly enchanted, and stood gazing without word or
+movement until she could endure no more delight. Then her mind
+collapsed to the thought--had the pony grown too? She glanced round.
+There was no pony, no grass, no flowers, no bright-birded forest--but
+the cottage of the wise woman--and before her, on the hearth of it, the
+goddess-child, the only thing unchanged.
+
+She gasped with astonishment.
+
+"You must set out for your father's palace immediately," said the lady.
+
+"But where is the wise woman?" asked Rosamond, looking all about.
+
+"Here," said the lady.
+
+And Rosamond, looking again, saw the wise woman, folded as usual in her
+long dark cloak.
+
+"And it was you all the time?" she cried in delight, and kneeled before
+her, burying her face in her garments.
+
+"It always is me, all the time," said the wise woman, smiling.
+
+"But which is the real you?" asked Rosamond; "this or that?"
+
+"Or a thousand others?" returned the wise woman. "But the one you have
+just seen is the likest to the real me that you are able to see just
+yet--but--. And that me you could not have seen a little while
+ago.--But, my darling child," she went on, lifting her up and clasping
+her to her bosom, "you must not think, because you have seen me once,
+that therefore you are capable of seeing me at all times. No; there are
+many things in you yet that must be changed before that can be. Now,
+however, you will seek me. Every time you feel you want me, that is a
+sign I am wanting you. There are yet many rooms in my house you may
+have to go through; but when you need no more of them, then you will be
+able to throw flowers like the little girl you saw in the forest."
+
+The princess gave a sigh.
+
+"Do not think," the wise woman went on, "that the things you have seen
+in my house are mere empty shows. You do not know, you cannot yet
+think, how living and true they are.--Now you must go."
+
+She led her once more into the great hall, and there showed her the
+picture of her father's capital, and his palace with the brazen gates.
+
+"There is your home," she said. "Go to it."
+
+The princess understood, and a flush of shame rose to her forehead. She
+turned to the wise woman and said:
+
+"Will you forgive ALL my naughtiness, and ALL the trouble I have given
+you?"
+
+"If I had not forgiven you, I would never have taken the trouble to
+punish you. If I had not loved you, do you think I would have carried
+you away in my cloak?"
+
+"How could you love such an ugly, ill-tempered, rude, hateful little
+wretch?"
+
+"I saw, through it all, what you were going to be," said the wise
+woman, kissing her. "But remember you have yet only BEGUN to be what I
+saw."
+
+"I will try to remember," said the princess, holding her cloak, and
+looking up in her face.
+
+"Go, then," said the wise woman.
+
+Rosamond turned away on the instant, ran to the picture, stepped over
+the frame of it, heard a door close gently, gave one glance back, saw
+behind her the loveliest palace-front of alabaster, gleaming in the
+pale-yellow light of an early summer-morning, looked again to the
+eastward, saw the faint outline of her father's city against the sky,
+and ran off to reach it.
+
+It looked much further off now than when it seemed a picture, but the
+sun was not yet up, and she had the whole of a summer day before her.
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+
+The soldiers sent out by the king, had no great difficulty in finding
+Agnes's father and mother, of whom they demanded if they knew any thing
+of such a young princess as they described. The honest pair told them
+the truth in every point--that, having lost their own child and found
+another, they had taken her home, and treated her as their own; that
+she had indeed called herself a princess, but they had not believed
+her, because she did not look like one; that, even if they had, they
+did not know how they could have done differently, seeing they were
+poor people, who could not afford to keep any idle person about the
+place; that they had done their best to teach her good ways, and had
+not parted with her until her bad temper rendered it impossible to put
+up with her any longer; that, as to the king's proclamation, they heard
+little of the world's news on their lonely hill, and it had never
+reached them; that if it had, they did not know how either of them
+could have gone such a distance from home, and left their sheep or
+their cottage, one or the other, uncared for.
+
+"You must learn, then, how both of you can go, and your sheep must take
+care of your cottage," said the lawyer, and commanded the soldiers to
+bind them hand and foot.
+
+Heedless of their entreaties to be spared such an indignity, the
+soldiers obeyed, bore them to a cart, and set out for the king's
+palace, leaving the cottage door open, the fire burning, the pot of
+potatoes boiling upon it, the sheep scattered over the hill, and the
+dogs not knowing what to do.
+
+Hardly were they gone, however, before the wise woman walked up, with
+Prince behind her, peeped into the cottage, locked the door, put the
+key in her pocket, and then walked away up the hill. In a few minutes
+there arose a great battle between Prince and the dog which filled his
+former place--a well-meaning but dull fellow, who could fight better
+than feed. Prince was not long in showing him that he was meant for his
+master, and then, by his efforts, and directions to the other dogs, the
+sheep were soon gathered again, and out of danger from foxes and bad
+dogs. As soon as this was done, the wise woman left them in charge of
+Prince, while she went to the next farm to arrange for the folding of
+the sheep and the feeding of the dogs.
+
+When the soldiers reached the palace, they were ordered to carry their
+prisoners at once into the presence of the king and queen, in the
+throne room. Their two thrones stood upon a high dais at one end, and
+on the floor at the foot of the dais, the soldiers laid their helpless
+prisoners. The queen commanded that they should be unbound, and ordered
+them to stand up. They obeyed with the dignity of insulted innocence,
+and their bearing offended their foolish majesties.
+
+Meantime the princess, after a long day's journey, arrived at the
+palace, and walked up to the sentry at the gate.
+
+"Stand back," said the sentry.
+
+"I wish to go in, if you please," said the princess gently.
+
+"Ha! ha! ha!" laughed the sentry, for he was one of those dull people
+who form their judgment from a person's clothes, without even looking
+in his eyes; and as the princess happened to be in rags, her request
+was amusing, and the booby thought himself quite clever for laughing at
+her so thoroughly.
+
+"I am the princess," Rosamond said quietly.
+
+"WHAT princess?" bellowed the man.
+
+"The princess Rosamond. Is there another?" she answered and asked.
+
+But the man was so tickled at the wondrous idea of a princess in rags,
+that he scarcely heard what she said for laughing. As soon as he
+recovered a little, he proceeded to chuck the princess under the chin,
+saying--
+
+"You're a pretty girl, my dear, though you ain't no princess."
+
+Rosamond drew back with dignity.
+
+"You have spoken three untruths at once," she said. "I am NOT pretty,
+and I AM a princess, and if I were dear to you, as I ought to be, you
+would not laugh at me because I am badly dressed, but stand aside, and
+let me go to my father and mother."
+
+The tone of her speech, and the rebuke she gave him, made the man look
+at her; and looking at her, he began to tremble inside his foolish
+body, and wonder whether he might not have made a mistake. He raised
+his hand in salute, and said--
+
+"I beg your pardon, miss, but I have express orders to admit no child
+whatever within the palace gates. They tell me his majesty the king
+says he is sick of children."
+
+"He may well be sick of me!" thought the princess; "but it can't mean
+that he does not want me home again.--I don't think you can very well
+call me a child," she said, looking the sentry full in the face.
+
+"You ain't very big, miss," answered the soldier, "but so be you say
+you ain't a child, I'll take the risk. The king can only kill me, and a
+man must die once."
+
+He opened the gate, stepped aside, and allowed her to pass. Had she
+lost her temper, as every one but the wise woman would have expected of
+her, he certainly would not have done so.
+
+She ran into the palace, the door of which had been left open by the
+porter when he followed the soldiers and prisoners to the throne-room,
+and bounded up the stairs to look for her father and mother. As she
+passed the door of the throne-room she heard an unusual noise in it,
+and running to the king's private entrance, over which hung a heavy
+curtain, she peeped past the edge of it, and saw, to her amazement, the
+shepherd and shepherdess standing like culprits before the king and
+queen, and the same moment heard the king say--
+
+"Peasants, where is the princess Rosamond?"
+
+"Truly, sire, we do not know," answered the shepherd.
+
+"You ought to know," said the king.
+
+"Sire, we could keep her no longer."
+
+"You confess, then," said the king, suppressing the outbreak of the
+wrath that boiled up in him, "that you turned her out of your house."
+
+For the king had been informed by a swift messenger of all that had
+passed long before the arrival of the prisoners.
+
+"We did, sire; but not only could we keep her no longer, but we knew
+not that she was the princess."
+
+"You ought to have known, the moment you cast your eyes upon her," said
+the king. "Any one who does not know a princess the moment he sees her,
+ought to have his eyes put out."
+
+"Indeed he ought," said the queen.
+
+To this they returned no answer, for they had none ready.
+
+"Why did you not bring her at once to the palace," pursued the king,
+"whether you knew her to be a princess or not? My proclamation left
+nothing to your judgment. It said EVERY CHILD."
+
+"We heard nothing of the proclamation, sire."
+
+"You ought to have heard," said the king. "It is enough that I make
+proclamations; it is for you to read them. Are they not written in
+letters of gold upon the brazen gates of this palace?"
+
+"A poor shepherd, your majesty--how often must he leave his flock, and
+go hundreds of miles to look whether there may not be something in
+letters of gold upon the brazen gates? We did not know that your
+majesty had made a proclamation, or even that the princess was lost."
+
+"You ought to have known," said the king.
+
+The shepherd held his peace.
+
+"But," said the queen, taking up the word, "all that is as nothing,
+when I think how you misused the darling."
+
+The only ground the queen had for saying thus, was what Agnes had told
+her as to how the princess was dressed; and her condition seemed to the
+queen so miserable, that she had imagined all sorts of oppression and
+cruelty.
+
+But this was more than the shepherdess, who had not yet spoken, could
+bear.
+
+"She would have been dead, and NOT buried, long ago, madam, if I had
+not carried her home in my two arms."
+
+"Why does she say her TWO arms?" said the king to himself. "Has she
+more than two? Is there treason in that?"
+
+"You dressed her in cast-off clothes," said the queen.
+
+"I dressed her in my own sweet child's Sunday clothes. And this is what
+I get for it!" cried the shepherdess, bursting into tears.
+
+"And what did you do with the clothes you took off her? Sell them?"
+
+"Put them in the fire, madam. They were not fit for the poorest child
+in the mountains. They were so ragged that you could see her skin
+through them in twenty different places."
+
+"You cruel woman, to torture a mother's feelings so!" cried the queen,
+and in her turn burst into tears.
+
+"And I'm sure," sobbed the shepherdess, "I took every pains to teach
+her what it was right for her to know. I taught her to tidy the house
+and"--
+
+"Tidy the house!" moaned the queen. "My poor wretched offspring!"
+
+"And peel the potatoes, and"--
+
+"Peel the potatoes!" cried the queen. "Oh, horror!"
+
+"And black her master's boots," said the shepherdess.
+
+"Black her master's boots!" shrieked the queen. "Oh, my white-handed
+princess! Oh, my ruined baby!"
+
+"What I want to know," said the king, paying no heed to this maternal
+duel, but patting the top of his sceptre as if it had been the hilt of
+a sword which he was about to draw, "is, where the princess is now."
+
+The shepherd made no answer, for he had nothing to say more than he had
+said already.
+
+"You have murdered her!" shouted the king. "You shall be tortured till
+you confess the truth; and then you shall be tortured to death, for you
+are the most abominable wretches in the whole wide world."
+
+"Who accuses me of crime?" cried the shepherd, indignant.
+
+"I accuse you," said the king; "but you shall see, face to face, the
+chief witness to your villany. Officer, bring the girl."
+
+Silence filled the hall while they waited. The king's face was swollen
+with anger. The queen hid hers behind her handkerchief. The shepherd
+and shepherdess bent their eyes on the ground, wondering. It was with
+difficulty Rosamond could keep her place, but so wise had she already
+become that she saw it would be far better to let every thing come out
+before she interfered.
+
+At length the door opened, and in came the officer, followed by Agnes,
+looking white as death and mean as sin.
+
+The shepherdess gave a shriek, and darted towards her with arms spread
+wide; the shepherd followed, but not so eagerly.
+
+"My child! my lost darling! my Agnes!" cried the shepherdess.
+
+"Hold them asunder," shouted the king. "Here is more villany! What!
+have I a scullery-maid in my house born of such parents? The parents of
+such a child must be capable of any thing. Take all three of them to
+the rack. Stretch them till their joints are torn asunder, and give
+them no water. Away with them!"
+
+The soldiers approached to lay hands on them. But, behold! a girl all
+in rags, with such a radiant countenance that it was right lovely to
+see, darted between, and careless of the royal presence, flung herself
+upon the shepherdess, crying,--
+
+"Do not touch her. She is my good, kind mistress."
+
+But the shepherdess could hear or see no one but her Agnes, and pushed
+her away. Then the princess turned, with the tears in her eyes, to the
+shepherd, and threw her arms about his neck and pulled down his head
+and kissed him. And the tall shepherd lifted her to his bosom and kept
+her there, but his eyes were fixed on his Agnes.
+
+"What is the meaning of this?" cried the king, starting up from his
+throne. "How did that ragged girl get in here? Take her away with the
+rest. She is one of them, too."
+
+But the princess made the shepherd set her down, and before any one
+could interfere she had run up the steps of the dais and then the steps
+of the king's throne like a squirrel, flung herself upon the king, and
+begun to smother him with kisses.
+
+All stood astonished, except the three peasants, who did not even see
+what took place. The shepherdess kept calling to her Agnes, but she was
+so ashamed that she did not dare even lift her eyes to meet her
+mother's, and the shepherd kept gazing on her in silence. As for the
+king, he was so breathless and aghast with astonishment, that he was
+too feeble to fling the ragged child from him, as he tried to do. But
+she left him, and running down the steps of the one throne and up those
+of the other, began kissing the queen next. But the queen cried out,--
+
+"Get away, you great rude child!--Will nobody take her to the rack?"
+
+Then the princess, hardly knowing what she did for joy that she had
+come in time, ran down the steps of the throne and the dais, and
+placing herself between the shepherd and shepherdess, took a hand of
+each, and stood looking at the king and queen.
+
+Their faces began to change. At last they began to know her. But she
+was so altered--so lovelily altered, that it was no wonder they should
+not have known her at the first glance; but it was the fault of the
+pride and anger and injustice with which their hearts were filled, that
+they did not know her at the second.
+
+The king gazed and the queen gazed, both half risen from their thrones,
+and looking as if about to tumble down upon her, if only they could be
+right sure that the ragged girl was their own child. A mistake would be
+such a dreadful thing!
+
+"My darling!" at last shrieked the mother, a little doubtfully.
+
+"My pet of pets?" cried the father, with an interrogative twist of tone.
+
+Another moment, and they were half way down the steps of the dais.
+
+"Stop!" said a voice of command from somewhere in the hall, and, king
+and queen as they were, they stopped at once half way, then drew
+themselves up, stared, and began to grow angry again, but durst not go
+farther.
+
+The wise woman was coming slowly up through the crowd that filled the
+hall. Every one made way for her. She came straight on until she stood
+in front of the king and queen.
+
+"Miserable man and woman!" she said, in words they alone could hear, "I
+took your daughter away when she was worthy of such parents; I bring
+her back, and they are unworthy of her. That you did not know her when
+she came to you is a small wonder, for you have been blind in soul all
+your lives: now be blind in body until your better eyes are unsealed."
+
+She threw her cloak open. It fell to the ground, and the radiance that
+flashed from her robe of snowy whiteness, from her face of awful
+beauty, and from her eyes that shone like pools of sunlight, smote them
+blind.
+
+Rosamond saw them give a great start, shudder, waver to and fro, then
+sit down on the steps of the dais; and she knew they were punished, but
+knew not how. She rushed up to them, and catching a hand of each said--
+
+"Father, dear father! mother dear! I will ask the wise woman to forgive
+you."
+
+"Oh, I am blind! I am blind!" they cried together. "Dark as night!
+Stone blind!"
+
+Rosamond left them, sprang down the steps, and kneeling at her feet,
+cried, "Oh, my lovely wise woman! do let them see. Do open their eyes,
+dear, good, wise woman."
+
+The wise woman bent down to her, and said, so that none else could
+hear, "I will one day. Meanwhile you must be their servant, as I have
+been yours. Bring them to me, and I will make them welcome."
+
+Rosamond rose, went up the steps again to her father and mother, where
+they sat like statues with closed eyes, half-way from the top of the
+dais where stood their empty thrones, seated herself between them, took
+a hand of each, and was still.
+
+All this time very few in the room saw the wise woman. The moment she
+threw off her cloak she vanished from the sight of almost all who were
+present. The woman who swept and dusted the hall and brushed the
+thrones, saw her, and the shepherd had a glimmering vision of her; but
+no one else that I know of caught a glimpse of her. The shepherdess did
+not see her. Nor did Agnes, but she felt her presence upon her like the
+beat of a furnace seven times heated.
+
+As soon as Rosamond had taken her place between her father and mother,
+the wise woman lifted her cloak from the floor, and threw it again
+around her. Then everybody saw her, and Agnes felt as if a soft dewy
+cloud had come between her and the torrid rays of a vertical sun. The
+wise woman turned to the shepherd and shepherdess.
+
+"For you," she said, "you are sufficiently punished by the work of your
+own hands. Instead of making your daughter obey you, you left her to be
+a slave to herself; you coaxed when you ought to have compelled; you
+praised when you ought to have been silent; you fondled when you ought
+to have punished; you threatened when you ought to have inflicted--and
+there she stands, the full-grown result of your foolishness! She is
+your crime and your punishment. Take her home with you, and live hour
+after hour with the pale-hearted disgrace you call your daughter. What
+she is, the worm at her heart has begun to teach her. When life is no
+longer endurable, come to me.
+
+"Madam," said the shepherd, "may I not go with you now?"
+
+"You shall," said the wise woman.
+
+"Husband! husband!" cried the shepherdess, "how are we two to get home
+without you?"
+
+"I will see to that," said the wise woman. "But little of home you will
+find it until you have come to me. The king carried you hither, and he
+shall carry you back. But your husband shall not go with you. He cannot
+now if he would."
+
+The shepherdess looked and saw that the shepherd stood in a deep sleep.
+She went to him and sought to rouse him, but neither tongue nor hands
+were of the slightest avail.
+
+The wise woman turned to Rosamond.
+
+"My child," she said, "I shall never be far from you. Come to me when
+you will. Bring them to me."
+
+Rosamond smiled and kissed her hand, but kept her place by her parents.
+They also were now in a deep sleep like the shepherd.
+
+The wise woman took the shepherd by the hand, and led him away.
+
+And that is all my double story. How double it is, if you care to know,
+you must find out. If you think it is not finished--I never knew a
+story that was. I could tell you a great deal more concerning them all,
+but I have already told more than is good for those who read but with
+their foreheads, and enough for those whom it has made look a little
+solemn, and sigh as they close the book.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Double Story, by George MacDonald
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Double Story, by George MacDonald
+#11 in our series by George MacDonald
+
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+*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
+
+
+Title: A Double Story
+
+Author: George MacDonald
+
+Release Date: May, 2004 [EBook #5676]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on August 7, 2002]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A DOUBLE STORY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Aldarondo
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A DOUBLE STORY
+
+BY GEORGE MACDONALD.
+
+NEW YORK:
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A DOUBLE STORY
+
+I.
+
+
+
+
+
+There was a certain country where things used to go rather oddly.
+For instance, you could never tell whether it was going to rain or
+hail, or whether or not the milk was going to turn sour. It was
+impossible to say whether the next baby would be a boy, or a girl,
+or even, after he was a week old, whether he would wake
+sweet-tempered or cross.
+
+In strict accordance with the peculiar nature of this country of
+uncertainties, it came to pass one day, that in the midst of a
+shower of rain that might well be called golden, seeing the sun,
+shining as it fell, turned all its drops into molten topazes, and
+every drop was good for a grain of golden corn, or a yellow cowslip,
+or a buttercup, or a dandelion at least;--while this splendid rain
+was falling, I say, with a musical patter upon the great leaves of
+the horse-chestnuts, which hung like Vandyke collars about the necks
+of the creamy, red-spotted blossoms, and on the leaves of the
+sycamores, looking as if they had blood in their veins, and on a
+multitude of flowers, of which some stood up and boldly held out
+their cups to catch their share, while others cowered down,
+laughing, under the soft patting blows of the heavy warm drops;--
+while this lovely rain was washing all the air clean from the motes,
+and the bad odors, and the poison-seeds that had escaped from their
+prisons during the long drought;--while it fell, splashing and
+sparkling, with a hum, and a rush, and a soft clashing--but stop! I
+am stealing, I find, and not that only, but with clumsy hands
+spoiling what I steal:--
+
+    "O Rain! with your dull twofold sound,
+     The clash hard by, and the murmur all round:"
+
+--there! take it, Mr. Coleridge;--while, as I was saying, the lovely
+little rivers whose fountains are the clouds, and which cut their
+own channels through the air, and make sweet noises rubbing against
+their banks as they hurry down and down, until at length they are
+pulled up on a sudden, with a musical plash, in the very heart of an
+odorous flower, that first gasps and then sighs up a blissful scent,
+or on the bald head of a stone that never says, Thank you;--while
+the very sheep felt it blessing them, though it could never reach
+their skins through the depth of their long wool, and the veriest
+hedgehog--I mean the one with the longest spikes--came and spiked
+himself out to impale as many of the drops as he could;--while the
+rain was thus falling, and the leaves, and the flowers, and the
+sheep, and the cattle, and the hedgehog, were all busily receiving
+the golden rain, something happened. It was not a great battle, nor
+an earthquake, nor a coronation, but something more important than
+all those put together. A BABY-GIRL WAS BORN; and her father was a
+king; and her mother was a queen; and her uncles and aunts were
+princes and princesses; and her first-cousins were dukes and
+duchesses; and not one of her second-cousins was less than a marquis
+or marchioness, or of their third-cousins less than an earl or
+countess: and below a countess they did not care to count. So the
+little girl was Somebody; and yet for all that, strange to say, the
+first thing she did was to cry. I told you it was a strange country.
+
+As she grew up, everybody about her did his best to convince her
+that she was Somebody; and the girl herself was so easily persuaded
+of it that she quite forgot that anybody had ever told her so, and
+took it for a fundamental, innate, primary, first-born, self-
+evident, necessary, and incontrovertible idea and principle that SHE
+WAS SOMEBODY. And far be it from me to deny it. I will even go so
+far as to assert that in this odd country there was a huge number of
+Somebodies. Indeed, it was one of its oddities that every boy and
+girl in it, was rather too ready to think he or she was Somebody;
+and the worst of it was that the princess never thought of there
+being more than one Somebody--and that was herself.
+
+Far away to the north in the same country, on the side of a bleak
+hill, where a horse-chestnut or a sycamore was never seen, where
+were no meadows rich with buttercups, only steep, rough, breezy
+slopes, covered with dry prickly furze and its flowers of red gold,
+or moister, softer broom with its flowers of yellow gold, and great
+sweeps of purple heather, mixed with bilberries, and crowberries,
+and cranberries--no, I am all wrong: there was nothing out yet but a
+few furze-blossoms; the rest were all waiting behind their doors
+till they were called; and no full, slow-gliding river with
+meadow-sweet along its oozy banks, only a little brook here and
+there, that dashed past without a moment to say, "How do you
+do?"--there (would you believe it?) while the same cloud that was
+dropping down golden rain all about the queen's new baby was dashing
+huge fierce handfuls of hail upon the hills, with such force that
+they flew spinning off the rocks and stones, went burrowing in the
+sheep's wool, stung the cheeks and chin of the shepherd with their
+sharp spiteful little blows, and made his dog wink and whine as they
+bounded off his hard wise head, and long sagacious nose; only, when
+they dropped plump down the chimney, and fell hissing in the little
+fire, they caught it then, for the clever little fire soon sent them
+up the chimney again, a good deal swollen, and harmless enough for a
+while, there (what do you think?) among the hailstones, and the
+heather, and the cold mountain air, another little girl was born,
+whom the shepherd her father, and the shepherdess her mother, and a
+good many of her kindred too, thought Somebody. She had not an uncle
+or an aunt that was less than a shepherd or dairymaid, not a cousin,
+that was less than a farm-laborer, not a second-cousin that was less
+than a grocer, and they did not count farther. And yet (would you
+believe it?) she too cried the very first thing. It WAS an odd
+country! And, what is still more surprising, the shepherd and
+shepherdess and the dairymaids and the laborers were not a bit wiser
+than the king and the queen and the dukes and the marquises and the
+earls; for they too, one and all, so constantly taught the little
+woman that she was Somebody, that she also forgot that there were a
+great many more Somebodies besides herself in the world.
+
+It was, indeed, a peculiar country, very different from ours--so
+different, that my reader must not be too much surprised when I add
+the amazing fact, that most of its inhabitants, instead of enjoying
+the things they had, were always wanting the things they had not,
+often even the things it was least likely they ever could have. The
+grown men and women being like this, there is no reason to be
+further astonished that the Princess Rosamond--the name her parents
+gave her because it means Rose of the World--should grow up like
+them, wanting every thing she could and every thing she couldn't
+have. The things she could have were a great many too many, for her
+foolish parents always gave her what they could; but still there
+remained a few things they couldn't give her, for they were only a
+common king and queen. They could and did give her a lighted candle
+when she cried for it, and managed by much care that she should not
+burn her fingers or set her frock on fire; but when she cried for
+the moon, that they could not give her. They did the worst thing
+possible, instead, however; for they pretended to do what they could
+not. They got her a thin disc of brilliantly polished silver, as
+near the size of the moon as they could agree upon; and, for a time
+she was delighted.
+
+But, unfortunately, one evening she made the discovery that her moon
+was a little peculiar, inasmuch as she could not shine in the dark.
+Her nurse happened to snuff out the candles as she was playing with
+it; and instantly came a shriek of rage, for her moon had vanished.
+Presently, through the opening of the curtains, she caught sight of
+the real moon, far away in the sky, and shining quite calmly, as if
+she had been there all the time; and her rage increased to such a
+degree that if it had not passed off in a fit, I do not know what
+might have come of it.
+
+As she grew up it was still the same, with this difference, that not
+only must she have every thing, but she got tired of every thing
+almost as soon as she had it. There was an accumulation of things in
+her nursery and schoolroom and bedroom that was perfectly appalling.
+Her mother's wardrobes were almost useless to her, so packed were
+they with things of which she never took any notice. When she was
+five years old, they gave her a splendid gold repeater, so close set
+with diamonds and rubies, that the back was just one crust of gems.
+In one of her little tempers, as they called her hideously ugly
+rages, she dashed it against the back of the chimney, after which it
+never gave a single tick; and some of the diamonds went to the
+ash-pit. As she grew older still, she became fond of animals, not in
+a way that brought them much pleasure, or herself much satisfaction.
+When angry, she would beat them, and try to pull them to pieces, and
+as soon as she became a little used to them, would neglect them
+altogether. Then, if they could, they would run away, and she was
+furious. Some white mice, which she had ceased feeding altogether,
+did so; and soon the palace was swarming with white mice. Their red
+eyes might be seen glowing, and their white skins gleaming, in every
+dark corner; but when it came to the king's finding a nest of them
+in his second-best crown, he was angry and ordered them to be
+drowned. The princess heard of it, however, and raised such a
+clamor, that there they were left until they should run away of
+themselves; and the poor king had to wear his best crown every day
+till then. Nothing that was the princess's property, whether she
+cared for it or not, was to be meddled with.
+
+Of course, as she grew, she grew worse; for she never tried to grow
+better. She became more and more peevish and fretful every
+day--dissatisfied not only with what she had, but with all that was
+around her, and constantly wishing things in general to be
+different. She found fault with every thing and everybody, and all
+that happened, and grew more and more disagreeable to every one who
+had to do with her. At last, when she had nearly killed her nurse,
+and had all but succeeded in hanging herself, and was miserable from
+morning to night, her parents thought it time to do something.
+
+A long way from the palace, in the heart of a deep wood of
+pine-trees, lived a wise woman. In some countries she would have
+been called a witch; but that would have been a mistake, for she
+never did any thing wicked, and had more power than any witch could
+have. As her fame was spread through all the country, the king heard
+of her; and, thinking she might perhaps be able to suggest
+something, sent for her. In the dead of the night, lest the princess
+should know it, the king's messenger brought into the palace a tall
+woman, muffled from head to foot in a cloak of black cloth. In the
+presence of both their Majesties, the king, to do her honor,
+requested her to sit; but she declined, and stood waiting to hear
+what they had to say. Nor had she to wait long, for almost instantly
+they began to tell her the dreadful trouble they were in with their
+only child; first the king talking, then the queen interposing with
+some yet more dreadful fact, and at times both letting out a torrent
+of words together, so anxious were they to show the wise woman that
+their perplexity was real, and their daughter a very terrible one.
+For a long while there appeared no sign of approaching pause. But
+the wise woman stood patiently folded in her black cloak, and
+listened without word or motion. At length silence fell; for they
+had talked themselves tired, and could not think of any thing more
+to add to the list of their child's enormities.
+
+After a minute, the wise woman unfolded her arms; and her cloak
+dropping open in front, disclosed a garment made of a strange stuff,
+which an old poet who knew her well has thus described:--
+
+    "All lilly white, withoutten spot or pride,
+     That seemd like silke and silver woven neare;
+     But neither silke nor silver therein did appeare."
+
+"How very badly you have treated her!" said the wise woman. "Poor
+child!"
+
+"Treated her badly?" gasped the king.
+
+"She is a very wicked child," said the queen; and both glared with
+indignation.
+
+"Yes, indeed!" returned the wise woman. "She is very naughty indeed,
+and that she must be made to feel; but it is half your fault too."
+
+"What!" stammered the king. "Haven't we given her every mortal thing
+she wanted?"
+
+"Surely," said the wise woman: "what else could have all but killed
+her? You should have given her a few things of the other sort. But
+you are far too dull to understand me."
+
+"You are very polite," remarked the king, with royal sarcasm on his
+thin, straight lips.
+
+The wise woman made no answer beyond a deep sigh; and the king and
+queen sat silent also in their anger, glaring at the wise woman. The
+silence lasted again for a minute, and then the wise woman folded
+her cloak around her, and her shining garment vanished like the moon
+when a great cloud comes over her. Yet another minute passed and the
+silence endured, for the smouldering wrath of the king and queen
+choked the channels of their speech. Then the wise woman turned her
+back on them, and so stood. At this, the rage of the king broke
+forth; and he cried to the queen, stammering in his fierceness,--
+
+"How should such an old hag as that teach Rosamond good manners? She
+knows nothing of them herself! Look how she stands!--actually with
+her back to us."
+
+At the word the wise woman walked from the room. The great folding
+doors fell to behind her; and the same moment the king and queen
+were quarrelling like apes as to which of them was to blame for her
+departure. Before their altercation was over, for it lasted till the
+early morning, in rushed Rosamond, clutching in her hand a poor
+little white rabbit, of which she was very fond, and from which,
+only because it would not come to her when she called it, she was
+pulling handfuls of fur in the attempt to tear the squealing,
+pink-eared, red-eyed thing to pieces.
+
+"Rosa, RosaMOND!" cried the queen; whereupon Rosamond threw the
+rabbit in her mother's face. The king started up in a fury, and ran
+to seize her. She darted shrieking from the room. The king rushed
+after her; but, to his amazement, she was nowhere to be seen: the
+huge hall was empty.--No: just outside the door, close to the
+threshold, with her back to it, sat the figure of the wise woman,
+muffled in her dark cloak, with her head bowed over her knees. As
+the king stood looking at her, she rose slowly, crossed the hall,
+and walked away down the marble staircase. The king called to her;
+but she never turned her head, or gave the least sign that she heard
+him. So quietly did she pass down the wide marble stair, that the
+king was all but persuaded he had seen only a shadow gliding across
+the white steps.
+
+For the princess, she was nowhere to be found. The queen went into
+hysterics; and the rabbit ran away. The king sent out messengers in
+every direction, but in vain.
+
+In a short time the palace was quiet--as quiet as it used to be
+before the princess was born. The king and queen cried a little now
+and then, for the hearts of parents were in that country strangely
+fashioned; and yet I am afraid the first movement of those very
+hearts would have been a jump of terror if the ears above them had
+heard the voice of Rosamond in one of the corridors. As for the rest
+of the household, they could not have made up a single tear amongst
+them. They thought, whatever it might be for the princess, it was,
+for every one else, the best thing that could have happened; and as
+to what had become of her, if their heads were puzzled, their hearts
+took no interest in the question. The lord-chancellor alone had an
+idea about it, but he was far too wise to utter it.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+
+
+
+
+The fact, as is plain, was, that the princess had disappeared in the
+folds of the wise woman's cloak. When she rushed from the room, the
+wise woman caught her to her bosom and flung the black garment
+around her. The princess struggled wildly, for she was in fierce
+terror, and screamed as loud as choking fright would permit her; but
+her father, standing in the door, and looking down upon the wise
+woman, saw never a movement of the cloak, so tight was she held by
+her captor. He was indeed aware of a most angry crying, which
+reminded him of his daughter; but it sounded to him so far away,
+that he took it for the passion of some child in the street, outside
+the palace-gates. Hence, unchallenged, the wise woman carried the
+princess down the marble stairs, out at the palace-door, down a
+great flight of steps outside, across a paved court, through the
+brazen gates, along half-roused streets where people were opening
+their shops, through the huge gates of the city, and out into the
+wide road, vanishing northwards; the princess struggling and
+screaming all the time, and the wise woman holding her tight. When
+at length she was too tired to struggle or scream any more, the wise
+woman unfolded her cloak, and set her down; and the princess saw the
+light and opened her swollen eyelids. There was nothing in sight
+that she had ever seen before. City and palace had disappeared. They
+were upon a wide road going straight on, with a ditch on each side
+of it, that behind them widened into the great moat surrounding the
+city. She cast up a terrified look into the wise woman's face, that
+gazed down upon her gravely and kindly. Now the princess did not in
+the least understand kindness. She always took it for a sign either
+of partiality or fear. So when the wise woman looked kindly upon
+her, she rushed at her, butting with her head like a ram: but the
+folds of the cloak had closed around the wise woman; and, when the
+princess ran against it, she found it hard as the cloak of a bronze
+statue, and fell back upon the road with a great bruise on her head.
+The wise woman lifted her again, and put her once more under the
+cloak, where she fell asleep, and where she awoke again only to find
+that she was still being carried on and on.
+
+When at length the wise woman again stopped and set her down, she
+saw around her a bright moonlit night, on a wide heath, solitary and
+houseless. Here she felt more frightened than before; nor was her
+terror assuaged when, looking up, she saw a stern, immovable
+countenance, with cold eyes fixedly regarding her. All she knew of
+the world being derived from nursery-tales, she concluded that the
+wise woman was an ogress, carrying her home to eat her.
+
+I have already said that the princess was, at this time of her life,
+such a low-minded creature, that severity had greater influence over
+her than kindness. She understood terror better far than tenderness.
+When the wise woman looked at her thus, she fell on her knees, and
+held up her hands to her, crying,--
+
+"Oh, don't eat me! don't eat me!"
+
+Now this being the best SHE could do, it was a sign she was a low
+creature. Think of it--to kick at kindness, and kneel from terror.
+But the sternness on the face of the wise woman came from the same
+heart and the same feeling as the kindness that had shone from it
+before. The only thing that could save the princess from her
+hatefulness, was that she should be made to mind somebody else than
+her own miserable Somebody.
+
+Without saying a word, the wise woman reached down her hand, took
+one of Rosamond's, and, lifting her to her feet, led her along
+through the moonlight. Every now and then a gush of obstinacy would
+well up in the heart of the princess, and she would give a great
+ill-tempered tug, and pull her hand away; but then the wise woman
+would gaze down upon her with such a look, that she instantly sought
+again the hand she had rejected, in pure terror lest she should be
+eaten upon the spot. And so they would walk on again; and when the
+wind blew the folds of the cloak against the princess, she found
+them soft as her mother's camel-hair shawl.
+
+After a little while the wise woman began to sing to her, and the
+princess could not help listening; for the soft wind amongst the low
+dry bushes of the heath, the rustle of their own steps, and the
+trailing of the wise woman's cloak, were the only sounds beside.
+
+And this is the song she sang:--
+
+        Out in the cold,
+        With a thin-worn fold
+        Of withered gold
+        Around her rolled,
+    Hangs in the air the weary moon.
+        She is old, old, old;
+        And her bones all cold,
+        And her tales all told,
+        And her things all sold,
+    And she has no breath to croon.
+
+        Like a castaway clout,
+        She is quite shut out!
+        She might call and shout,
+        But no one about
+    Would ever call back, "Who's there?"
+        There is never a hut,
+        Not a door to shut,
+        Not a footpath or rut,
+        Long road or short cut,
+    Leading to anywhere!
+
+        She is all alone
+        Like a dog-picked bone,
+        The poor old crone!
+        She fain would groan,
+    But she cannot find the breath.
+        She once had a fire;
+        But she built it no higher,
+        And only sat nigher
+        Till she saw it expire;
+    And now she is cold as death.
+
+        She never will smile
+        All the lonesome while.
+        Oh the mile after mile,
+        And never a stile!
+    And never a tree or a stone!
+        She has not a tear:
+        Afar and anear
+        It is all so drear,
+        But she does not care,
+    Her heart is as dry as a bone.
+
+        None to come near her!
+        No one to cheer her!
+        No one to jeer her!
+        No one to hear her!
+    Not a thing to lift and hold!
+        She is always awake,
+        But her heart will not break:
+        She can only quake,
+        Shiver, and shake:
+    The old woman is very cold.
+
+As strange as the song, was the crooning wailing tune that the wise
+woman sung. At the first note almost, you would have thought she
+wanted to frighten the princess; and so indeed she did. For when
+people WILL be naughty, they have to be frightened, and they are not
+expected to like it. The princess grew angry, pulled her hand away,
+and cried,--
+
+"YOU are the ugly old woman. I hate you!"
+
+Therewith she stood still, expecting the wise woman to stop also,
+perhaps coax her to go on: if she did, she was determined not to
+move a step. But the wise woman never even looked about: she kept
+walking on steadily, the same space as before. Little Obstinate
+thought for certain she would turn; for she regarded herself as much
+too precious to be left behind. But on and on the wise woman went,
+until she had vanished away in the dim moonlight. Then all at once
+the princess perceived that she was left alone with the moon,
+looking down on her from the height of her loneliness. She was
+horribly frightened, and began to run after the wise woman, calling
+aloud. But the song she had just heard came back to the sound of her
+own running feet,--
+
+    All all alone,
+    Like a dog-picked bone!
+
+and again,--
+
+        She might call and shout,
+        And no one about
+    Would ever call back, "Who's there?"
+
+and she screamed as she ran. How she wished she knew the old woman's
+name, that she might call it after her through the moonlight!
+
+But the wise woman had, in truth, heard the first sound of her
+running feet, and stopped and turned, waiting. What with running and
+crying, however, and a fall or two as she ran, the princess never
+saw her until she fell right into her arms--and the same moment into
+a fresh rage; for as soon as any trouble was over the princess was
+always ready to begin another. The wise woman therefore pushed her
+away, and walked on; while the princess ran scolding and storming
+after her. She had to run till, from very fatigue, her rudeness
+ceased. Her heart gave way; she burst into tears, and ran on
+silently weeping.
+
+A minute more and the wise woman stooped, and lifting her in her
+arms, folded her cloak around her. Instantly she fell asleep, and
+slept as soft and as soundly as if she had been in her own bed. She
+slept till the moon went down; she slept till the sun rose up; she
+slept till he climbed the topmost sky; she slept till he went down
+again, and the poor old moon came peaking and peering out once more:
+and all that time the wise woman went walking on and on very fast.
+And now they had reached a spot where a few fir-trees came to meet
+them through the moonlight.
+
+At the same time the princess awaked, and popping her head out
+between the folds of the wise woman's cloak--a very ugly little
+owlet she looked--saw that they were entering the wood. Now there is
+something awful about every wood, especially in the moonlight; and
+perhaps a fir-wood is more awful than other woods. For one thing, it
+lets a little more light through, rendering the darkness a little
+more visible, as it were; and then the trees go stretching away up
+towards the moon, and look as if they cared nothing about the
+creatures below them--not like the broad trees with soft wide leaves
+that, in the darkness even, look sheltering. So the princess is not
+to be blamed that she was very much frightened. She is hardly to be
+blamed either that, assured the wise woman was an ogress carrying
+her to her castle to eat her up, she began again to kick and scream
+violently, as those of my readers who are of the same sort as
+herself will consider the right and natural thing to do. The wrong
+in her was this--that she had led such a bad life, that she did not
+know a good woman when she saw her; took her for one like herself,
+even after she had slept in her arms.
+
+Immediately the wise woman set her down, and, walking on, within a
+few paces vanished among the trees. Then the cries of the princess
+rent the air, but the fir-trees never heeded her; not one of their
+hard little needles gave a single shiver for all the noise she made.
+But there were creatures in the forest who were soon quite as much
+interested in her cries as the fir-trees were indifferent to them.
+They began to hearken and howl and snuff about, and run hither and
+thither, and grin with their white teeth, and light up the green
+lamps in their eyes. In a minute or two a whole army of wolves and
+hyenas were rushing from all quarters through the pillar like stems
+of the fir-trees, to the place where she stood calling them, without
+knowing it. The noise she made herself, however, prevented her from
+hearing either their howls or the soft pattering of their many
+trampling feet as they bounded over the fallen fir needles and
+cones.
+
+One huge old wolf had outsped the rest--not that he could run
+faster, but that from experience he could more exactly judge whence
+the cries came, and as he shot through the wood, she caught sight at
+last of his lamping eyes coming swiftly nearer and nearer. Terror
+silenced her. She stood with her mouth open, as if she were going to
+eat the wolf, but she had no breath to scream with, and her tongue
+curled up in her mouth like a withered and frozen leaf. She could do
+nothing but stare at the coming monster. And now he was taking a few
+shorter bounds, measuring the distance for the one final leap that
+should bring him upon her, when out stepped the wise woman from
+behind the very tree by which she had set the princess down, caught
+the wolf by the throat half-way in his last spring, shook him once,
+and threw him from her dead. Then she turned towards the princess,
+who flung herself into her arms, and was instantly lapped in the
+folds of her cloak.
+
+But now the huge army of wolves and hyenas had rushed like a sea
+around them, whose waves leaped with hoarse roar and hollow yell up
+against the wise woman. But she, like a strong stately vessel, moved
+unhurt through the midst of them. Ever as they leaped against her
+cloak, they dropped and slunk away back through the crowd. Others
+ever succeeded, and ever in their turn fell, and drew back
+confounded. For some time she walked on attended and assailed on all
+sides by the howling pack. Suddenly they turned and swept away,
+vanishing in the depths of the forest. She neither slackened nor
+hastened her step, but went walking on as before.
+
+In a little while she unfolded her cloak, and let the princess look
+out. The firs had ceased; and they were on a lofty height of
+moorland, stony and bare and dry, with tufts of heather and a few
+small plants here and there. About the heath, on every side, lay the
+forest, looking in the moonlight like a cloud; and above the forest,
+like the shaven crown of a monk, rose the bare moor over which they
+were walking. Presently, a little way in front of them, the princess
+espied a whitewashed cottage, gleaming in the moon. As they came
+nearer, she saw that the roof was covered with thatch, over which
+the moss had grown green. It was a very simple, humble place, not in
+the least terrible to look at, and yet, as soon as she saw it, her
+fear again awoke, and always, as soon as her fear awoke, the trust
+of the princess fell into a dead sleep. Foolish and useless as she
+might by this time have known it, she once more began kicking and
+screaming, whereupon, yet once more, the wise woman set her down on
+the heath, a few yards from the back of the cottage, and saying
+only, "No one ever gets into my house who does not knock at the
+door, and ask to come in," disappeared round the corner of the
+cottage, leaving the princess alone with the moon--two white faces
+in the cone of the night.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+
+
+
+
+The moon stared at the princess, and the princess stared at the
+moon; but the moon had the best of it, and the princess began to
+cry. And now the question was between the moon and the cottage. The
+princess thought she knew the worst of the moon, and she knew
+nothing at all about the cottage, therefore she would stay with the
+moon. Strange, was it not, that she should have been so long with
+the wise woman, and yet know NOTHING about that cottage? As for the
+moon, she did not by any means know the worst of her, or even, that,
+if she were to fall asleep where she could find her, the old witch
+would certainly do her best to twist her face.
+
+But she had scarcely sat a moment longer before she was assailed by
+all sorts of fresh fears. First of all, the soft wind blowing gently
+through the dry stalks of the heather and its thousands of little
+bells raised a sweet rustling, which the princess took for the
+hissing of serpents, for you know she had been naughty for so long
+that she could not in a great many things tell the good from the
+bad. Then nobody could deny that there, all round about the heath,
+like a ring of darkness, lay the gloomy fir-wood, and the princess
+knew what it was full of, and every now and then she thought she
+heard the howling of its wolves and hyenas. And who could tell but
+some of them might break from their covert and sweep like a shadow
+across the heath? Indeed, it was not once nor twice that for a
+moment she was fully persuaded she saw a great beast coming leaping
+and bounding through the moonlight to have her all to himself. She
+did not know that not a single evil creature dared set foot on that
+heath, or that, if one should do so, it would that instant wither up
+and cease. If an army of them had rushed to invade it, it would have
+melted away on the edge of it, and ceased like a dying wave.--She
+even imagined that the moon was slowly coming nearer and nearer down
+the sky to take her and freeze her to death in her arms. The wise
+woman, too, she felt sure, although her cottage looked asleep, was
+watching her at some little window. In this, however, she would have
+been quite right, if she had only imagined enough--namely, that the
+wise woman was watching OVER her from the little window. But after
+all, somehow, the thought of the wise woman was less frightful than
+that of any of her other terrors, and at length she began to wonder
+whether it the moonlight to have her all to himself. She did not
+know that not a single evil creature dared set foot on that heath,
+or that, if one should do so, it would that instant wither up and
+cease. If an army of them had rushed to invade it, it would have
+melted away on the edge of it, and ceased like a dying wave.--She
+even imagined that the moon was slowly coming nearer and nearer down
+the sky to take her and freeze her to death in her arms. The wise
+woman, too, she felt sure, although her cottage looked asleep, was
+watching her at some little window. In this, however, she would have
+been quite right, if she had only imagined enough--namely, that the
+wise woman was watching OVER her from the little window. But after
+all, somehow, the thought of the wise woman was less frightful than
+that of any of her other terrors, and at length she began to wonder
+whether it her sadly through her gay silken slippers. She threw
+herself on the heath, which came up to the walls of the cottage on
+every side, and roared and screamed with rage. Suddenly, however,
+she remembered how her screaming had brought the horde of wolves and
+hyenas about her in the forest, and, ceasing at once, lay still,
+gazing yet again at the moon. And then came the thought of her
+parents in the palace at home. In her mind's eye she saw her mother
+sitting at her embroidery with the tears dropping upon it, and her
+father staring into the fire as if he were looking for her in its
+glowing caverns. It is true that if they had both been in tears by
+her side because of her naughtiness, she would not have cared a
+straw; but now her own forlorn condition somehow helped her to
+understand their grief at having lost her, and not only a great
+longing to be back in her comfortable home, but a feeble flutter of
+genuine love for her parents awoke in her heart as well, and she
+burst into real tears--soft, mournful tears--very different from
+those of rage and disappointment to which she was so much used. And
+another very remarkable thing was that the moment she began to love
+her father and mother, she began to wish to see the wise woman
+again. The idea of her being an ogress vanished utterly, and she
+thought of her only as one to take her in from the moon, and the
+loneliness, and the terrors of the forest-haunted heath, and hide
+her in a cottage with not even a door for the horrid wolves to howl
+against.
+
+But the old woman--as the princess called her, not knowing that her
+real name was the Wise Woman--had told her that she must knock at
+the door: how was she to do that when there was no door? But again
+she bethought herself--that, if she could not do all she was told,
+she could, at least, do a part of it: if she could not knock at the
+door, she could at least knock--say on the wall, for there was
+nothing else to knock upon--and perhaps the old woman would hear
+her, and lift her in by some window. Thereupon, she rose at once to
+her feet, and picking up a stone, began to knock on the wall with
+it. A loud noise was the result, and she found she was knocking on
+the very door itself. For a moment she feared the old woman would be
+offended, but the next, there came a voice, saying,
+
+"Who is there?"
+
+The princess answered,
+
+"Please, old woman, I did not mean to knock so loud."
+
+To this there came no reply.
+
+Then the princess knocked again, this time with her knuckles, and
+the voice came again, saying,
+
+"Who is there?"
+
+And the princess answered,
+
+"Rosamond."
+
+Then a second time there was silence. But the princess soon ventured
+to knock a third time.
+
+"What do you want?" said the voice.
+
+"Oh, please, let me in!" said the princess.
+
+"The moon will keep staring at me; and I hear the wolves in the
+wood."
+
+Then the door opened, and the princess entered. She looked all
+around, but saw nothing of the wise woman.
+
+It was a single bare little room, with a white deal table, and a few
+old wooden chairs, a fire of fir-wood on the hearth, the smoke of
+which smelt sweet, and a patch of thick-growing heath in one
+corner. Poor as it was, compared to the grand place Rosamond had
+left, she felt no little satisfaction as she shut the door, and
+looked around her. And what with the sufferings and terrors she had
+left outside, the new kind of tears she had shed, the love she had
+begun to feel for her parents, and the trust she had begun to place
+in the wise woman, it seemed to her as if her soul had grown larger
+of a sudden, and she had left the days of her childishness and
+naughtiness far behind her. People are so ready to think themselves
+changed when it is only their mood that is changed! Those who are
+good-tempered because it is a fine day, will be ill-tempered when it
+rains: their selves are just the same both days; only in the one
+case, the fine weather has got into them, in the other the rainy.
+Rosamond, as she sat warming herself by the glow of the peat-fire,
+turning over in her mind all that had passed, and feeling how
+pleasant the change in her feelings was, began by degrees to think
+how very good she had grown, and how very good she was to have grown
+good, and how extremely good she must always have been that she was
+able to grow so very good as she now felt she had grown; and she
+became so absorbed in her self-admiration as never to notice either
+that the fire was dying, or that a heap of fir-cones lay in a corner
+near it. Suddenly, a great wind came roaring down the chimney, and
+scattered the ashes about the floor; a tremendous rain followed, and
+fell hissing on the embers; the moon was swallowed up, and there was
+darkness all about her. Then a flash of lightning, followed by a
+peal of thunder, so terrified the princess, that she cried aloud for
+the old woman, but there came no answer to her cry.
+
+Then in her terror the princess grew angry, and saying to herself,
+"She must be somewhere in the place, else who was there to open the
+door to me?" began to shout and yell, and call the wise woman all
+the bad names she had been in the habit of throwing at her nurses.
+But there came not a single sound in reply.
+
+Strange to say, the princess never thought of telling herself now
+how naughty she was, though that would surely have been reasonable.
+On the contrary, she thought she had a perfect right to be angry,
+for was she not most desperately ill used--and a princess too? But
+the wind howled on, and the rain kept pouring down the chimney, and
+every now and then the lightning burst out, and the thunder rushed
+after it, as if the great lumbering sound could ever think to catch
+up with the swift light!
+
+At length the princess had again grown so angry, frightened, and
+miserable, all together, that she jumped up and hurried about the
+cottage with outstretched arms, trying to find the wise woman. But
+being in a bad temper always makes people stupid, and presently she
+struck her forehead such a blow against something--she thought
+herself it felt like the old woman's cloak--that she fell back--not
+on the floor, though, but on the patch of heather, which felt as
+soft and pleasant as any bed in the palace. There, worn out with
+weeping and rage, she soon fell fast asleep.
+
+She dreamed that she was the old cold woman up in the sky, with no
+home and no friends, and no nothing at all, not even a pocket;
+wandering, wandering forever, over a desert of blue sand, never to
+get to anywhere, and never to lie down or die. It was no use
+stopping to look about her, for what had she to do but forever look
+about her as she went on and on and on--never seeing any thing, and
+never expecting to see any thing! The only shadow of a hope she had
+was, that she might by slow degrees grow thinner and thinner, until
+at last she wore away to nothing at all; only alas! she could not
+detect the least sign that she had yet begun to grow thinner. The
+hopelessness grew at length so unendurable that she woke with a
+start. Seeing the face of the wise woman bending over her, she threw
+her arms around her neck and held up her mouth to be kissed. And the
+kiss of the wise woman was like the rose-gardens of Damascus.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+
+
+
+
+The wise woman lifted her tenderly, and washed and dressed her far
+more carefully than even her nurse. Then she set her down by the
+fire, and prepared her breakfast. The princess was very hungry, and
+the bread and milk as good as it could be, so that she thought she
+had never in her life eaten any thing nicer. Nevertheless, as soon
+as she began to have enough, she said to herself,--
+
+"Ha! I see how it is! The old woman wants to fatten me! That is why
+she gives me such nice creamy milk. She doesn't kill me now because
+she's going to kill me then! She IS an ogress, after all!"
+
+Thereupon she laid down her spoon, and would not eat another
+mouthful--only followed the basin with longing looks, as the wise
+woman carried it away.
+
+When she stopped eating, her hostess knew exactly what she was
+thinking; but it was one thing to understand the princess, and quite
+another to make the princess understand her: that would require
+time. For the present she took no notice, but went about the affairs
+of the house, sweeping the floor, brushing down the cobwebs,
+cleaning the hearth, dusting the table and chairs, and watering the
+bed to keep it fresh and alive--for she never had more than one
+guest at a time, and never would allow that guest to go to sleep
+upon any thing that had no life in it All the time she was thus
+busied, she spoke not a word to the princess, which, with the
+princess, went to confirm her notion of her purposes. But whatever
+she might have said would have been only perverted by the princess
+into yet stronger proof of her evil designs, for a fancy in her own
+head would outweigh any multitude of facts in another's. She kept
+staring at the fire, and never looked round to see what the wise
+woman might be doing.
+
+By and by she came close up to the back of her chair, and said,
+
+"Rosamond!"
+
+But the princess had fallen into one of her sulky moods, and shut
+herself up with her own ugly Somebody; so she never looked round or
+even answered the wise woman.
+
+"Rosamond," she repeated, "I am going out. If you are a good girl,
+that is, if you do as I tell you, I will carry you back to your
+father and mother the moment I return."
+
+The princess did not take the least notice.
+
+"Look at me, Rosamond," said the wise woman.
+
+But Rosamond never moved--never even shrugged her shoulders--perhaps
+because they were already up to her ears, and could go no farther.
+
+"I want to help you to do what I tell you," said the wise woman.
+"Look at me."
+
+Still Rosamond was motionless and silent, saying only to herself,
+
+"I know what she's after! She wants to show me her horrid teeth. But
+I won't look. I'm not going to be frightened out of my senses to
+please her."
+
+"You had better look, Rosamond. Have you forgotten how you kissed me
+this morning?"
+
+But Rosamond now regarded that little throb of affection as a
+momentary weakness into which the deceitful ogress had betrayed her,
+and almost despised herself for it. She was one of those who the
+more they are coaxed are the more disagreeable. For such, the wise
+woman had an awful punishment, but she remembered that the princess
+had been very ill brought up, and therefore wished to try her with
+all gentleness first.
+
+She stood silent for a moment, to see what effect her words might
+have. But Rosamond only said to herself,--
+
+"She wants to fatten and eat me."
+
+And it was such a little while since she had looked into the wise
+woman's loving eyes, thrown her arms round her neck, and kissed her!
+
+"Well," said the wise woman gently, after pausing as long as it
+seemed possible she might bethink herself, "I must tell you then
+without; only whoever listens with her back turned, listens but
+half, and gets but half the help."
+
+"She wants to fatten me," said the princess.
+
+"You must keep the cottage tidy while I am out. When I come back, I
+must see the fire bright, the hearth swept, and the kettle boiling;
+no dust on the table or chairs, the windows clear, the floor clean,
+and the heather in blossom--which last comes of sprinkling it with
+water three times a day. When you are hungry, put your hand into
+that hole in the wall, and you will find a meal."
+
+"She wants to fatten me," said the princess.
+
+"But on no account leave the house till I come back," continued the
+wise woman, "or you will grievously repent it. Remember what you
+have already gone through to reach it. Dangers lie all around this
+cottage of mine; but inside, it is the safest place--in fact the
+only quite safe place in all the country."
+
+"She means to eat me," said the princess, "and therefore wants to
+frighten me from running away."
+
+She heard the voice no more. Then, suddenly startled at the thought
+of being alone, she looked hastily over her shoulder. The cottage
+was indeed empty of all visible life. It was soundless, too: there
+was not even a ticking clock or a flapping flame. The fire burned
+still and smouldering-wise; but it was all the company she had, and
+she turned again to stare into it.
+
+Soon she began to grow weary of having nothing to do. Then she
+remembered that the old woman, as she called her, had told her to
+keep the house tidy.
+
+"The miserable little pig-sty!" she said. "Where's the use of
+keeping such a hovel clean!"
+
+But in truth she would have been glad of the employment, only just
+because she had been told to do it, she was unwilling; for there ARE
+people--however unlikely it may seem--who object to doing a thing
+for no other reason than that it is required of them.
+
+"I am a princess," she said, "and it is very improper to ask me to
+do such a thing."
+
+She might have judged it quite as suitable for a princess to sweep
+away the dust as to sit the centre of a world of dirt. But just
+because she ought, she wouldn't. Perhaps she feared that if she gave
+in to doing her duty once, she might have to do it always--which
+was true enough--for that was the very thing for which she had been
+specially born.
+
+Unable, however, to feel quite comfortable in the resolve to neglect
+it, she said to herself, "I'm sure there's time enough for such a
+nasty job as that!" and sat on, watching the fire as it burned away,
+the glowing red casting off white flakes, and sinking lower and
+lower on the hearth.
+
+By and by, merely for want of something to do, she would see what
+the old woman had left for her in the hole of the wall. But when she
+put in her hand she found nothing there, except the dust which she
+ought by this time to have wiped away. Never reflecting that the
+wise woman had told her she would find food there WHEN SHE WAS
+HUNGRY, she flew into one of her furies, calling her a cheat, and a
+thief, and a liar, and an ugly old witch, and an ogress, and I do
+not know how many wicked names besides. She raged until she was
+quite exhausted, and then fell fast asleep on her chair. When she
+awoke the fire was out.
+
+By this time she was hungry; but without looking in the hole, she
+began again to storm at the wise woman, in which labor she would no
+doubt have once more exhausted herself, had not something white
+caught her eye: it was the corner of a napkin hanging from the hole
+in the wall. She bounded to it, and there was a dinner for her of
+something strangely good--one of her favorite dishes, only better
+than she had ever tasted it before. This might surely have at least
+changed her mood towards the wise woman; but she only grumbled to
+herself that it was as it ought to be, ate up the food, and lay down
+on the bed, never thinking of fire, or dust, or water for the
+heather.
+
+The wind began to moan about the cottage, and grew louder and
+louder, till a great gust came down the chimney, and again scattered
+the white ashes all over the place. But the princess was by this
+time fast asleep, and never woke till the wind had sunk to silence.
+One of the consequences, however, of sleeping when one ought to be
+awake is waking when one ought to be asleep; and the princess awoke
+in the black midnight, and found enough to keep her awake. For
+although the wind had fallen, there was a far more terrible howling
+than that of the wildest wind all about the cottage. Nor was the
+howling all; the air was full of strange cries; and everywhere she
+heard the noise of claws scratching against the house, which seemed
+all doors and windows, so crowded were the sounds, and from so many
+directions. All the night long she lay half swooning, yet listening
+to the hideous noises. But with the first glimmer of morning they
+ceased.
+
+Then she said to herself, "How fortunate it was that I woke! They
+would have eaten me up if I had been asleep." The miserable little
+wretch actually talked as if she had kept them out! If she had done
+her work in the day, she would have slept through the terrors of the
+darkness, and awaked fearless; whereas now, she had in the
+storehouse of her heart a whole harvest of agonies, reaped from the
+dun fields of the night!
+
+They were neither wolves nor hyenas which had caused her such
+dismay, but creatures of the air, more frightful still, which, as
+soon as the smoke of the burning fir-wood ceased to spread itself
+abroad, and the sun was a sufficient distance down the sky, and the
+lone cold woman was out, came flying and howling about the cottage,
+trying to get in at every door and window. Down the chimney they
+would have got, but that at the heart of the fire there always lay a
+certain fir-cone, which looked like solid gold red-hot, and which,
+although it might easily get covered up with ashes, so as to be
+quite invisible, was continually in a glow fit to kindle all the
+fir-cones in the world; this it was which had kept the horrible
+birds--some say they have a claw at the tip of every
+wing-feather--from tearing the poor naughty princess to pieces, and
+gobbling her up.
+
+When she rose and looked about her, she was dismayed to see what a
+state the cottage was in. The fire was out, and the windows were all
+dim with the wings and claws of the dirty birds, while the bed from
+which she had just risen was brown and withered, and half its purple
+bells had fallen. But she consoled herself that she could set all to
+rights in a few minutes--only she must breakfast first. And, sure
+enough, there was a basin of the delicious bread and milk ready for
+her in the hole of the wall!
+
+After she had eaten it, she felt comfortable, and sat for a long
+time building castles in the air--till she was actually hungry
+again, without having done an atom of work. She ate again, and was
+idle again, and ate again. Then it grew dark, and she went trembling
+to bed, for now she remembered the horrors of the last night. This
+time she never slept at all, but spent the long hours in grievous
+terror, for the noises were worse than before. She vowed she would
+not pass another night in such a hateful haunted old shed for all
+the ugly women, witches, and ogresses in the wide world. In the
+morning, however, she fell asleep, and slept late.
+
+Breakfast was of course her first thought, after which she could not
+avoid that of work. It made her very miserable, but she feared the
+consequences of being found with it undone. A few minutes before
+noon, she actually got up, took her pinafore for a duster, and
+proceeded to dust the table. But the wood-ashes flew about so, that
+it seemed useless to attempt getting rid of them, and she sat down
+again to think what was to be done. But there is very little indeed
+to be done when we will not do that which we have to do.
+
+Her first thought now was to run away at once while the sun was
+high, and get through the forest before night came on. She fancied
+she could easily go back the way she had come, and get home to her
+father's palace. But not the most experienced traveller in the world
+can ever go back the way the wise woman has brought him.
+
+She got up and went to the door. It was locked! What could the old
+woman have meant by telling her not to leave the cottage? She was
+indignant.
+
+The wise woman had meant to make it difficult, but not impossible.
+Before the princess, however, could find the way out, she heard a
+hand at the door, and darted in terror behind it. The wise woman
+opened it, and, leaving it open, walked straight to the hearth.
+Rosamond immediately slid out, ran a little way, and then laid
+herself down in the long heather.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+
+
+
+
+The wise woman walked straight up to the hearth, looked at the fire,
+looked at the bed, glanced round the room, and went up to the table.
+When she saw the one streak in the thick dust which the princess had
+left there, a smile, half sad, half pleased, like the sun peeping
+through a cloud on a rainy day in spring, gleamed over her face. She
+went at once to the door, and called in a loud voice,
+
+"Rosamond, come to me."
+
+All the wolves and hyenas, fast asleep in the wood, heard her voice,
+and shivered in their dreams. No wonder then that the princess
+trembled, and found herself compelled, she could not understand how,
+to obey the summons. She rose, like the guilty thing she felt,
+forsook of herself the hiding-place she had chosen, and walked
+slowly back to the cottage she had left full of the signs of her
+shame. When she entered, she saw the wise woman on her knees,
+building up the fire with fir-cones. Already the flame was climbing
+through the heap in all directions, crackling gently, and sending a
+sweet aromatic odor through the dusty cottage.
+
+"That is my part of the work," she said, rising. "Now you do yours.
+But first let me remind you that if you had not put it off, you
+would have found it not only far easier, but by and by quite
+pleasant work, much more pleasant than you can imagine now; nor
+would you have found the time go wearily: you would neither have
+slept in the day and let the fire out, nor waked at night and heard
+the howling of the beast-birds. More than all, you would have been
+glad to see me when I came back; and would have leaped into my arms
+instead of standing there, looking so ugly and foolish."
+
+As she spoke, suddenly she held up before the princess a tiny
+mirror, so clear that nobody looking into it could tell what it was
+made of, or even see it at all--only the thing reflected in it.
+Rosamond saw a child with dirty fat cheeks, greedy mouth, cowardly
+eyes--which, not daring to look forward, seemed trying to hide
+behind an impertinent nose--stooping shoulders, tangled hair,
+tattered clothes, and smears and stains everywhere. That was what
+she had made herself. And to tell the truth, she was shocked at the
+sight, and immediately began, in her dirty heart, to lay the blame
+on the wise woman, because she had taken her away from her nurses
+and her fine clothes; while all the time she knew well enough that,
+close by the heather-bed, was the loveliest little well, just big
+enough to wash in, the water of which was always springing fresh
+from the ground, and running away through the wall. Beside it lay
+the whitest of linen towels, with a comb made of mother-of-pearl,
+and a brush of fir-needles, any one of which she had been far too
+lazy to use. She dashed the glass out of the wise woman's hand, and
+there it lay, broken into a thousand pieces!
+
+Without a word, the wise woman stooped, and gathered the
+fragments--did not leave searching until she had gathered the last
+atom, and she laid them all carefully, one by one, in the fire, now
+blazing high on the hearth. Then she stood up and looked at the
+princess, who had been watching her sulkily.
+
+"Rosamond," she said, with a countenance awful in its sternness,
+"until you have cleansed this room--"
+
+"She calls it a room!" sneered the princess to herself.
+
+"You shall have no morsel to eat. You may drink of the well, but
+nothing else you shall have. When the work I set you is done, you
+will find food in the same place as before. I am going from home
+again; and again I warn you not to leave the house."
+
+"She calls it a house!--It's a good thing she's going out of it
+anyhow!" said the princess, turning her back for mere rudeness, for
+she was one who, even if she liked a thing before, would dislike it
+the moment any person in authority over her desired her to do it.
+
+When she looked again, the wise woman had vanished.
+
+Thereupon the princess ran at once to the door, and tried to open
+it; but open it would not. She searched on all sides, but could
+discover no way of getting out. The windows would not open--at least
+she could not open them; and the only outlet seemed the chimney,
+which she was afraid to try because of the fire, which looked angry,
+she thought, and shot out green flames when she went near it. So she
+sat down to consider. One may well wonder what room for
+consideration there was--with all her work lying undone behind her.
+She sat thus, however, considering, as she called it, until hunger
+began to sting her, when she jumped up and put her hand as usual in
+the hole of the wall: there was nothing there. She fell straight
+into one of her stupid rages; but neither her hunger nor the hole in
+the wall heeded her rage. Then, in a burst of self-pity, she fell
+a-weeping, but neither the hunger nor the hole cared for her tears.
+The darkness began to come on, and her hunger grew and grew, and the
+terror of the wild noises of the last night invaded her. Then she
+began to feel cold, and saw that the fire was dying. She darted to
+the heap of cones, and fed it. It blazed up cheerily, and she was
+comforted a little. Then she thought with herself it would surely be
+better to give in so far, and do a little work, than die of hunger.
+So catching up a duster, she began upon the table. The dust flew
+about and nearly choked her. She ran to the well to drink, and was
+refreshed and encouraged. Perceiving now that it was a tedious plan
+to wipe the dust from the table on to the floor, whence it would
+have all to be swept up again, she got a wooden platter, wiped the
+dust into that, carried it to the fire, and threw it in. But all the
+time she was getting more and more hungry and, although she tried
+the hole again and again, it was only to become more and more
+certain that work she must if she would eat.
+
+At length all the furniture was dusted, and she began to sweep the
+floor, which happily, she thought of sprinkling with water, as from
+the window she had seen them do to the marble court of the palace.
+That swept, she rushed again to the hole--but still no food! She was
+on the verge of another rage, when the thought came that she might
+have forgotten something. To her dismay she found that table and
+chairs and every thing was again covered with dust--not so badly as
+before, however. Again she set to work, driven by hunger, and drawn
+by the hope of eating, and yet again, after a second careful wiping,
+sought the hole. But no! nothing was there for her! What could it
+mean?
+
+Her asking this question was a sign of progress: it showed that she
+expected the wise woman to keep her word. Then she bethought her
+that she had forgotten the household utensils, and the dishes and
+plates, some of which wanted to be washed as well as dusted.
+
+Faint with hunger, she set to work yet again. One thing made her
+think of another, until at length she had cleaned every thing she
+could think of. Now surely she must find some food in the hole!
+
+When this time also there was nothing, she began once more to abuse
+the wise woman as false and treacherous;--but ah! there was the bed
+unwatered! That was soon amended.--Still no supper! Ah! there was
+the hearth unswept, and the fire wanted making up!--Still no
+supper! What else could there be? She was at her wits' end, and in
+very weariness, not laziness this time, sat down and gazed into the
+fire. There, as she gazed, she spied something brilliant,--shining
+even, in the midst of the fire: it was the little mirror all whole
+again; but little she knew that the dust which she had thrown into
+the fire had helped to heal it. She drew it out carefully, and,
+looking into it, saw, not indeed the ugly creature she had seen
+there before, but still a very dirty little animal; whereupon she
+hurried to the well, took off her clothes, plunged into it, and
+washed herself clean. Then she brushed and combed her hair, made her
+clothes as tidy as might be, and ran to the hole in the wall: there
+was a huge basin of bread and milk!
+
+Never had she eaten any thing with half the relish! Alas! however,
+when she had finished, she did not wash the basin, but left it as it
+was, revealing how entirely all the rest had been done only from
+hunger. Then she threw herself on the heather, and was fast asleep
+in a moment. Never an evil bird came near her all that night, nor
+had she so much as one troubled dream.
+
+In the morning as she lay awake before getting up, she spied what
+seemed a door behind the tall eight-day clock that stood silent in
+the corner.
+
+"Ah!" she thought, "that must be the way out!" and got up instantly.
+The first thing she did, however, was to go to the hole in the wall.
+Nothing was there.
+
+"Well, I am hardly used!" she cried aloud. "All that cleaning for
+the cross old woman yesterday, and this for my trouble,--nothing for
+breakfast! Not even a crust of bread! Does Mistress Ogress fancy a
+princess will bear that?"
+
+The poor foolish creature seemed to think that the work of one day
+ought to serve for the next day too! But that is nowhere the way in
+the whole universe. How could there be a universe in that case? And
+even she never dreamed of applying the same rule to her breakfast.
+
+"How good I was all yesterday!" she said, "and how hungry and ill
+used I am to-day!"
+
+But she would NOT be a slave, and do over again to-day what she had
+done only last night! SHE didn't care about her breakfast! She might
+have it no doubt if she dusted all the wretched place again, but she
+was not going to do that--at least, without seeing first what lay
+behind the clock!
+
+Off she darted, and putting her hand behind the clock found the
+latch of a door. It lifted, and the door opened a little way. By
+squeezing hard, she managed to get behind the clock, and so through
+the door. But how she stared, when instead of the open heath, she
+found herself on the marble floor of a large and stately room,
+lighted only from above. Its walls were strengthened by pilasters,
+and in every space between was a large picture, from cornice to
+floor. She did not know what to make of it. Surely she had run all
+round the cottage, and certainly had seen nothing of this size near
+it! She forgot that she had also run round what she took for a
+hay-mow, a peat-stack, and several other things which looked of no
+consequence in the moonlight.
+
+"So, then," she cried, "the old woman IS a cheat! I believe she's an
+ogress, after all, and lives in a palace--though she pretends it's
+only a cottage, to keep people from suspecting that she eats good
+little children like me!"
+
+Had the princess been tolerably tractable, she would, by this time,
+have known a good deal about the wise woman's beautiful house,
+whereas she had never till now got farther than the porch. Neither
+was she at all in its innermost places now.
+
+But, king's daughter as she was, she was not a little daunted when,
+stepping forward from the recess of the door, she saw what a great
+lordly hall it was. She dared hardly look to the other end, it
+seemed so far off: so she began to gaze at the things near her, and
+the pictures first of all, for she had a great liking for pictures.
+One in particular attracted her attention. She came back to it
+several times, and at length stood absorbed in it.
+
+A blue summer sky, with white fleecy clouds floating beneath it,
+hung over a hill green to the very top, and alive with streams
+darting down its sides toward the valley below. On the face of the
+hill strayed a flock of sheep feeding, attended by a shepherd and
+two dogs. A little way apart, a girl stood with bare feet in a
+brook, building across it a bridge of rough stones. The wind was
+blowing her hair back from her rosy face. A lamb was feeding close
+beside her; and a sheepdog was trying to reach her hand to lick it.
+
+"Oh, how I wish I were that little girl!" said the princess aloud.
+"I wonder how it is that some people are made to be so much happier
+than others! If I were that little girl, no one would ever call me
+naughty."
+
+She gazed and gazed at the picture. At length she said to herself,
+
+"I do not believe it is a picture. It is the real country, with a
+real hill, and a real little girl upon it. I shall soon see whether
+this isn't another of the old witch's cheats!"
+
+She went close up to the picture, lifted her foot, and stepped over
+the frame.
+
+"I am free, I am free!" she exclaimed; and she felt the wind upon
+her cheek.
+
+The sound of a closing door struck on her ear. She turned--and there
+was a blank wall, without door or window, behind her. The hill with
+the sheep was before her, and she set out at once to reach it.
+
+Now, if I am asked how this could be, I can only answer, that it was
+a result of the interaction of things outside and things inside, of
+the wise woman's skill, and the silly child's folly. If this does
+not satisfy my questioner, I can only add, that the wise woman was
+able to do far more wonderful things than this.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+
+
+
+
+Meantime the wise woman was busy as she always was; and her business
+now was with the child of the shepherd and shepherdess, away in the
+north. Her name was Agnes.
+
+Her father and mother were poor, and could not give her many things.
+Rosamond would have utterly despised the rude, simple playthings she
+had. Yet in one respect they were of more value far than hers: the
+king bought Rosamond's with his money; Agnes's father made hers with
+his hands.
+
+And while Agnes had but few things--not seeing many things about
+her, and not even knowing that there were many things anywhere, she
+did not wish for many things, and was therefore neither covetous nor
+avaricious.
+
+She played with the toys her father made her, and thought them the
+most wonderful things in the world--windmills, and little crooks,
+and water-wheels, and sometimes lambs made all of wool, and dolls
+made out of the leg-bones of sheep, which her mother dressed for
+her; and of such playthings she was never tired. Sometimes, however,
+she preferred playing with stones, which were plentiful, and
+flowers, which were few, or the brooks that ran down the hill, of
+which, although they were many, she could only play with one at a
+time, and that, indeed, troubled her a little--or live lambs that
+were not all wool, or the sheep-dogs, which were very friendly with
+her, and the best of playfellows, as she thought, for she had no
+human ones to compare them with. Neither was she greedy after nice
+things, but content, as well she might be, with the homely food
+provided for her. Nor was she by nature particularly self-willed or
+disobedient; she generally did what her father and mother wished,
+and believed what they told her. But by degrees they had spoiled
+her; and this was the way: they were so proud of her that they
+always repeated every thing she said, and told every thing she did,
+even when she was present; and so full of admiration of their child
+were they, that they wondered and laughed at and praised things in
+her which in another child would never have struck them as the least
+remarkable, and some things even which would in another have
+disgusted them altogether. Impertinent and rude things done by THEIR
+child they thought SO clever! laughing at them as something quite
+marvellous; her commonplace speeches were said over again as if they
+had been the finest poetry; and the pretty ways which every
+moderately good child has were extolled as if the result of her
+excellent taste, and the choice of her judgment and will. They would
+even say sometimes that she ought not to hear her own praises for
+fear it should make her vain, and then whisper them behind their
+hands, but so loud that she could not fail to hear every word. The
+consequence was that she soon came to believe--so soon, that she
+could not recall the time when she did not believe, as the most
+absolute fact in the universe, that she was SOMEBODY; that is, she
+became most immoderately conceited.
+
+Now as the least atom of conceit is a thing to be ashamed of, you
+may fancy what she was like with such a quantity of it inside her!
+
+At first it did not show itself outside in any very active form; but
+the wise woman had been to the cottage, and had seen her sitting
+alone, with such a smile of self-satisfaction upon her face as would
+have been quite startling to her, if she had ever been startled at
+any thing; for through that smile she could see lying at the root of
+it the worm that made it. For some smiles are like the ruddiness of
+certain apples, which is owing to a centipede, or other creeping
+thing, coiled up at the heart of them. Only her worm had a face and
+shape the very image of her own; and she looked so simpering, and
+mawkish, and self-conscious, and silly, that she made the wise woman
+feel rather sick.
+
+Not that the child was a fool. Had she been, the wise woman would
+have only pitied and loved her, instead of feeling sick when she
+looked at her. She had very fair abilities, and were she once but
+made humble, would be capable not only of doing a good deal in time,
+but of beginning at once to grow to no end. But, if she were not
+made humble, her growing would be to a mass of distorted shapes all
+huddled together; so that, although the body she now showed might
+grow up straight and well-shaped and comely to behold, the new body
+that was growing inside of it, and would come out of it when she
+died, would be ugly, and crooked this way and that, like an aged
+hawthorn that has lived hundreds of years exposed upon all sides to
+salt sea-winds.
+
+As time went on, this disease of self-conceit went on too, gradually
+devouring the good that was in her. For there is no fault that does
+not bring its brothers and sisters and cousins to live with it. By
+degrees, from thinking herself so clever, she came to fancy that
+whatever seemed to her, must of course be the correct judgment, and
+whatever she wished, the right thing; and grew so obstinate, that at
+length her parents feared to thwart her in any thing, knowing well
+that she would never give in. But there are victories far worse than
+defeats; and to overcome an angel too gentle to put out all his
+strength, and ride away in triumph on the back of a devil, is one of
+the poorest.
+
+So long as she was left to take her own way and do as she would, she
+gave her parents little trouble. She would play about by herself in
+the little garden with its few hardy flowers, or amongst the heather
+where the bees were busy; or she would wander away amongst the
+hills, and be nobody knew where, sometimes from morning to night;
+nor did her parents venture to find fault with her.
+
+She never went into rages like the princess, and would have thought
+Rosamond--oh, so ugly and vile! if she had seen her in one of her
+passions. But she was no better, for all that, and was quite as ugly
+in the eyes of the wise woman, who could not only see but read her
+face. What is there to choose between a face distorted to
+hideousness by anger, and one distorted to silliness by
+self-complacency? True, there is more hope of helping the angry
+child out of her form of selfishness than the conceited child out of
+hers; but on the other hand, the conceited child was not so terrible
+or dangerous as the wrathful one. The conceited one, however, was
+sometimes very angry, and then her anger was more spiteful than the
+other's; and, again, the wrathful one was often very conceited too.
+So that, on the whole, of two very unpleasant creatures, I would say
+that the king's daughter would have been the worse, had not the
+shepherd's been quite as bad. But, as I have said, the wise woman
+had her eye upon her: she saw that something special must be done,
+else she would be one of those who kneel to their own shadows till
+feet grow on their knees; then go down on their hands till their
+hands grow into feet; then lay their faces on the ground till they
+grow into snouts; when at last they are a hideous sort of lizards,
+each of which believes himself the best, wisest, and loveliest being
+in the world, yea, the very centre of the universe. And so they run
+about forever looking for their own shadows, that they may worship
+them, and miserable because they cannot find them, being themselves
+too near the ground to have any shadows; and what becomes of them at
+last there is but one who knows.
+
+The wise woman, therefore, one day walked up to the door of the
+shepherd's cottage, dressed like a poor woman, and asked for a drink
+of water. The shepherd's wife looked at her, liked her, and brought
+her a cup of milk. The wise woman took it, for she made it a rule to
+accept every kindness that was offered her.
+
+Agnes was not by nature a greedy girl, as I have said; but
+self-conceit will go far to generate every other vice under the sun.
+Vanity, which is a form of self-conceit, has repeatedly shown itself
+as the deepest feeling in the heart of a horrible murderess.
+
+That morning, at breakfast, her mother had stinted her in milk--just
+a little--that she might have enough to make some milk-porridge for
+their dinner. Agnes did not mind it at the time, but when she saw
+the milk now given to a beggar, as she called the wise
+woman--though, surely, one might ask a draught of water, and accept
+a draught of milk, without being a beggar in any such sense as
+Agnes's contemptuous use of the word implied--a cloud came upon her
+forehead, and a double vertical wrinkle settled over her nose. The
+wise woman saw it, for all her business was with Agnes though she
+little knew it, and, rising, went and offered the cup to the child,
+where she sat with her knitting in a corner. Agnes looked at it, did
+not want it, was inclined to refuse it from a beggar, but thinking
+it would show her consequence to assert her rights, took it and
+drank it up. For whoever is possessed by a devil, judges with the
+mind of that devil; and hence Agnes was guilty of such a meanness as
+many who are themselves capable of something just as bad will
+consider incredible.
+
+The wise woman waited till she had finished it--then, looking into
+the empty cup, said:
+
+"You might have given me back as much as you had no claim upon!"
+
+Agnes turned away and made no answer--far less from shame than
+indignation.
+
+The wise woman looked at the mother.
+
+"You should not have offered it to her if you did not mean her to
+have it," said the mother, siding with the devil in her child
+against the wise woman and her child too. Some foolish people think
+they take another's part when they take the part he takes.
+
+The wise woman said nothing, but fixed her eyes upon her, and soon
+the mother hid her face in her apron weeping. Then she turned again
+to Agnes, who had never looked round but sat with her back to both,
+and suddenly lapped her in the folds of her cloak. When the mother
+again lifted her eyes, she had vanished.
+
+Never supposing she had carried away her child, but uncomfortable
+because of what she had said to the poor woman, the mother went to
+the door, and called after her as she toiled slowly up the hill. But
+she never turned her head; and the mother went back into her
+cottage.
+
+The wise woman walked close past the shepherd and his dogs, and
+through the midst of his flock of sheep. The shepherd wondered where
+she could be going--right up the hill. There was something strange
+about her too, he thought; and he followed her with his eyes as she
+went up and up.
+
+It was near sunset, and as the sun went down, a gray cloud settted
+on the top of the mountain, which his last rays turned into a rosy
+gold. Straight into this cloud the shepherd saw the woman hold her
+pace, and in it she vanished. He little imagined that his child was
+under her cloak.
+
+He went home as usual in the evening, but Agnes had not come in.
+They were accustomed to such an absence now and then, and were not
+at first frightened; but when it grew dark and she did not appear,
+the husband set out with his dogs in one direction, and the wife in
+another, to seek their child. Morning came and they had not found
+her. Then the whole country-side arose to search for the missing
+Agnes; but day after day and night after night passed, and nothing
+was discovered of or concerning her, until at length all gave up the
+search in despair except the mother, although she was nearly
+convinced now that the poor woman had carried her off.
+
+One day she had wandered some distance from her cottage, thinking
+she might come upon the remains of her daughter at the foot of some
+cliff, when she came suddenly, instead, upon a disconsolate-looking
+creature sitting on a stone by the side of a stream.
+
+Her hair hung in tangles from her head; her clothes were tattered,
+and through the rents her skin showed in many places; her cheeks
+were white, and worn thin with hunger; the hollows were dark under
+her eyes, and they stood out scared and wild. When she caught sight
+of the shepherdess, she jumped to her feet, and would have run away,
+but fell down in a faint.
+
+At first sight the mother had taken her for her own child, but now
+she saw, with a pang of disappointment, that she had mistaken. Full
+of compassion, nevertheless, she said to herself:
+
+"If she is not my Agnes, she is as much in need of help as if she
+were. If I cannot be good to my own, I will be as good as I can to
+some other woman's; and though I should scorn to be consoled for the
+loss of one by the presence of another, I yet may find some gladness
+in rescuing one child from the death which has taken the other."
+
+Perhaps her words were not just like these, but her thoughts were.
+She took up the child, and carried her home. And this is how
+Rosamond came to occupy the place of the little girl whom she had
+envied in the picture.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+
+
+
+
+Notwithstanding the differences between the two girls, which were,
+indeed, so many that most people would have said they were not in
+the least alike, they were the same in this, that each cared more
+for her own fancies and desires than for any thing else in the
+world. But I will tell you another difference: the princess was like
+several children in one--such was the variety of her moods; and in
+one mood she had no recollection or care about any thing whatever
+belonging to a previous mood--not even if it had left her but a
+moment before, and had been so violent as to make her ready to put
+her hand in the fire to get what she wanted. Plainly she was the
+mere puppet of her moods, and more than that, any cunning nurse who
+knew her well enough could call or send away those moods almost as
+she pleased, like a showman pulling strings behind a show. Agnes, on
+the contrary, seldom changed her mood, but kept that of calm assured
+self-satisfaction. Father nor mother had ever by wise punishment
+helped her to gain a victory over herself, and do what she did not
+like or choose; and their folly in reasoning with one unreasonable
+had fixed her in her conceit. She would actually nod her head to
+herself in complacent pride that she had stood out against them.
+This, however, was not so difficult as to justify even the pride of
+having conquered, seeing she loved them so little, and paid so
+little attention to the arguments and persuasions they used.
+Neither, when she found herself wrapped in the dark folds of the
+wise woman's cloak, did she behave in the least like the princess,
+for she was not afraid. "She'll soon set me down," she said, too
+self-important to suppose that any one would dare do her an injury.
+
+Whether it be a good thing or a bad not to be afraid depends on what
+the fearlessness is founded upon. Some have no fear, because they
+have no knowledge of the danger: there is nothing fine in that. Some
+are too stupid to be afraid: there is nothing fine in that. Some who
+are not easily frightened would yet turn their backs and run, the
+moment they were frightened: such never had more courage than fear.
+But the man who will do his work in spite of his fear is a man of
+true courage. The fearlessness of Agnes was only ignorance: she did
+not know what it was to be hurt; she had never read a single story
+of giant, or ogress or wolf; and her mother had never carried out
+one of her threats of punishment. If the wise woman had but pinched
+her, she would have shown herself an abject little coward, trembling
+with fear at every change of motion so long as she carried her.
+
+Nothing such, however, was in the wise woman's plan for the curing
+of her. On and on she carried her without a word. She knew that if
+she set her down she would never run after her like the princess, at
+least not before the evil thing was already upon her. On and on she
+went, never halting, never letting the light look in, or Agnes look
+out. She walked very fast, and got home to her cottage very soon
+after the princess had gone from it.
+
+But she did not set Agnes down either in the cottage or in the great
+hall. She had other places, none of them alike. The place she had
+chosen for Agnes was a strange one--such a one as is to be found
+nowhere else in the wide world.
+
+It was a great hollow sphere, made of a substance similar to that of
+the mirror which Rosamond had broken, but differently compounded.
+That substance no one could see by itself. It had neither door, nor
+window, nor any opening to break its perfect roundness.
+
+The wise woman carried Agnes into a dark room, there undressed her,
+took from her hand her knitting-needles, and put her, naked as she
+was born, into the hollow sphere.
+
+What sort of a place it was she could not tell. She could see
+nothing but a faint cold bluish light all about her. She could not
+feel that any thing supported her, and yet she did not sink. She
+stood for a while, perfectly calm, then sat down. Nothing bad could
+happen to HER--she was so important! And, indeed, it was but this:
+she had cared only for Somebody, and now she was going to have only
+Somebody. Her own choice was going to be carried a good deal farther
+for her than she would have knowingly carried it for herself.
+
+After sitting a while, she wished she had something to do, but
+nothing came. A little longer, and it grew wearisome. She would see
+whether she could not walk out of the strange luminous dusk that
+surrounded her.
+
+Walk she found she could, well enough, but walk out she could not.
+On and on she went, keeping as much in a straight line as she might,
+but after walking until she was thoroughly tired, she found herself
+no nearer out of her prison than before. She had not, indeed,
+advanced a single step; for, in whatever direction she tried to go,
+the sphere turned round and round, answering her feet accordingly.
+Like a squirrel in his cage she but kept placing another spot of the
+cunningly suspended sphere under her feet, and she would have been
+still only at its lowest point after walking for ages.
+
+At length she cried aloud; but there was no answer. It grew dreary
+and drearier--in her, that is: outside there was no change. Nothing
+was overhead, nothing under foot, nothing on either hand, but the
+same pale, faint, bluish glimmer. She wept at last, then grew very
+angry, and then sullen; but nobody heeded whether she cried or
+laughed. It was all the same to the cold unmoving twilight that
+rounded her. On and on went the dreary hours--or did they go at
+all?--"no change, no pause, no hope;"--on and on till she FELT she
+was forgotten, and then she grew strangely still and fell asleep.
+
+The moment she was asleep, the wise woman came, lifted her out, and
+laid her in her bosom; fed her with a wonderful milk, which she
+received without knowing it; nursed her all the night long, and,
+just ere she woke, laid her back in the blue sphere again.
+
+When first she came to herself, she thought the horrors of the
+preceding day had been all a dream of the night. But they soon
+asserted themselves as facts, for here they were!--nothing to see
+but a cold blue light, and nothing to do but see it. Oh, how slowly
+the hours went by! She lost all notion of time. If she had been told
+that she had been there twenty years, she would have believed it--or
+twenty minutes--it would have been all the same: except for
+weariness, time was for her no more.
+
+Another night came, and another still, during both of which the wise
+woman nursed and fed her. But she knew nothing of that, and the same
+one dreary day seemed ever brooding over her.
+
+All at once, on the third day, she was aware that a naked child was
+seated beside her. But there was something about the child that made
+her shudder. She never looked at Agnes, but sat with her chin sunk
+on her chest, and her eyes staring at her own toes. She was the
+color of pale earth, with a pinched nose, and a mere slit in her
+face for a mouth.
+
+"How ugly she is!" thought Agnes. "What business has she beside me!"
+
+But it was so lonely that she would have been glad to play with a
+serpent, and put out her hand to touch her. She touched nothing. The
+child, also, put out her hand--but in the direction away from Agnes.
+And that was well, for if she had touched Agnes it would have killed
+her. Then Agnes said, "Who are you?" And the little girl said, "Who
+are you?" "I am Agnes," said Agnes; and the little girl said, "I am
+Agnes." Then Agnes thought she was mocking her, and said, "You are
+ugly;" and the little girl said, "You are ugly."
+
+Then Agnes lost her temper, and put out her hands to seize the
+little girl; but lo! the little girl was gone, and she found herself
+tugging at her own hair. She let go; and there was the little girl
+again! Agnes was furious now, and flew at her to bite her. But she
+found her teeth in her own arm, and the little girl was gone--only
+to return again; and each time she came back she was tenfold uglier
+than before. And now Agnes hated her with her whole heart.
+
+The moment she hated her, it flashed upon her with a sickening
+disgust that the child was not another, but her Self, her Somebody,
+and that she was now shut up with her for ever and ever--no more for
+one moment ever to be alone. In her agony of despair, sleep
+descended, and she slept.
+
+When she woke, there was the little girl, heedless, ugly, miserable,
+staring at her own toes. All at once, the creature began to smile,
+but with such an odious, self-satisfied expression, that Agnes felt
+ashamed of seeing her. Then she began to pat her own cheeks, to
+stroke her own body, and examine her finger-ends, nodding her head
+with satisfaction. Agnes felt that there could not be such another
+hateful, ape-like creature, and at the same time was perfectly aware
+she was only doing outside of her what she herself had been doing,
+as long as she could remember, inside of her.
+
+She turned sick at herself, and would gladly have been put out of
+existence, but for three days the odious companionship went on. By
+the third day, Agnes was not merely sick but ashamed of the life she
+had hitherto led, was despicable in her own eyes, and astonished
+that she had never seen the truth concerning herself before.
+
+The next morning she woke in the arms of the wise woman; the horror
+had vanished from her sight, and two heavenly eyes were gazing upon
+her. She wept and clung to her, and the more she clung, the more
+tenderly did the great strong arms close around her.
+
+When she had lain thus for a while, the wise woman carried her into
+her cottage, and washed her in the little well; then dressed her in
+clean garments, and gave her bread and milk. When she had eaten it,
+she called her to her, and said very solemnly,--
+
+"Agnes, you must not imagine you are cured. That you are ashamed of
+yourself now is no sign that the cause for such shame has ceased. In
+new circumstances, especially after you have done well for a while,
+you will be in danger of thinking just as much of yourself as
+before. So beware of yourself. I am going from home, and leave you
+in charge of the house. Do just as I tell you till my return."
+
+She then gave her the same directions she had formerly given
+Rosamond--with this difference, that she told her to go into the
+picture-hall when she pleased, showing her the entrance, against
+which the clock no longer stood--and went away, closing the door
+behind her.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+
+
+
+
+As soon as she was left alone, Agnes set to work tidying and dusting
+the cottage, made up the fire, watered the bed, and cleaned the
+inside of the windows: the wise woman herself always kept the
+outside of them clean. When she had done, she found her dinner--of
+the same sort she was used to at home, but better--in the hole of
+the wall. When she had eaten it, she went to look at the pictures.
+
+By this time her old disposition had begun to rouse again. She had
+been doing her duty, and had in consequence begun again to think
+herself Somebody. However strange it may well seem, to do one's duty
+will make any one conceited who only does it sometimes. Those who do
+it always would as soon think of being conceited of eating their
+dinner as of doing their duty. What honest boy would pride himself
+on not picking pockets? A thief who was trying to reform would. To
+be conceited of doing one's duty is then a sign of how little one
+does it, and how little one sees what a contemptible thing it is not
+to do it. Could any but a low creature be conceited of not being
+contemptible? Until our duty becomes to us common as breathing, we
+are poor creatures.
+
+So Agnes began to stroke herself once more, forgetting her late
+self-stroking companion, and never reflecting that she was now doing
+what she had then abhorred. And in this mood she went into the
+picture-gallery.
+
+The first picture she saw represented a square in a great city, one
+side of which was occupied by a splendid marble palace, with great
+flights of broad steps leading up to the door. Between it and the
+square was a marble-paved court, with gates of brass, at which stood
+sentries in gorgeous uniforms, and to which was affixed the
+following proclamation in letters of gold, large enough for Agnes to
+read:--
+
+"By the will of the King, from this time until further notice, every
+stray child found in the realm shall be brought without a moment's
+delay to the palace. Whoever shall be found having done otherwise
+shall straightway lose his head by the hand of the public
+executioner."
+
+Agnes's heart beat loud, and her face flushed.
+
+"Can there be such a city in the world?" she said to herself. "If I
+only knew where it was, I should set out for it at once. THERE would
+be the place for a clever girl like me!"
+
+Her eyes fell on the picture which had so enticed Rosamond. It was
+the very country where her father fed his flocks. Just round the
+shoulder of the hill was the cottage where her parents lived, where
+she was born and whence she had been carried by the beggar-woman.
+
+"Ah!" she said, "they didn't know me there. They little thought what
+I could be, if I had the chance. If I were but in this good, kind,
+loving, generous king's palace, I should soon be such a great lady
+as they never saw! Then they would understand what a good little
+girl I had always been! And I shouldn't forget my poor parents like
+some I have read of. _I_ would be generous. _I_ should never be
+selfish and proud like girls in story-books!"
+
+As she said this, she turned her back with disdain upon the picture
+of her home, and setting herself before the picture of the palace,
+stared at it with wide ambitious eyes, and a heart whose every beat
+was a throb of arrogant self-esteem.
+
+The shepherd-child was now worse than ever the poor princess had
+been. For the wise woman had given her a terrible lesson one of
+which the princess was not capable, and she had known what it meant;
+yet here she was as bad as ever, therefore worse than before. The
+ugly creature whose presence had made her so miserable had indeed
+crept out of sight and mind too--but where was she? Nestling in her
+very heart, where most of all she had her company, and least of all
+could see her. The wise woman had called her out, that Agnes might
+see what sort of creature she was herself; but now she was snug in
+her soul's bed again, and sue did not even suspect she was there.
+
+After gazing a while at the palace picture, during which her
+ambitious pride rose and rose, she turned yet again in condescending
+mood, and honored the home picture with one stare more.
+
+"What a poor, miserable spot it is compared with this lordly
+palace!" she said.
+
+But presently she spied something in it she had not seen before, and
+drew nearer. It was the form of a little girl, building a bridge of
+stones over one of the hill-brooks.
+
+"Ah, there I am myself!" she said. "That is just how I used to
+do.--No," she resumed, "it is not me. That snub-nosed little fright
+could never be meant for me! It was the frock that made me think so.
+But it IS a picture of the place. I declare, I can see the smoke of
+the cottage rising from behind the hill! What a dull, dirty,
+insignificant spot it is! And what a life to lead there!"
+
+She turned once more to the city picture. And now a strange thing
+took place. In proportion as the other, to the eyes of her mind,
+receded into the background, this, to her present bodily eyes,
+appeared to come forward and assume reality. At last, after it had
+been in this way growing upon her for some time, she gave a cry of
+conviction, and said aloud,--
+
+"I do believe it is real! That frame is only a trick of the woman to
+make me fancy it a picture lest I should go and make my fortune. She
+is a witch, the ugly old creature! It would serve her right to tell
+the king and have her punished for not taking me to the palace--one
+of his poor lost children he is so fond of! I should like to see her
+ugly old head cut off. Anyhow I will try my luck without asking her
+leave. How she has ill used me!"
+
+But at that moment, she heard the voice of the wise woman calling,
+"Agnes!" and, smoothing her face, she tried to look as good as she
+could, and walked back into the cottage. There stood the wise woman,
+looking all round the place, and examining her work. She fixed her
+eyes upon Agnes in a way that confused her, and made her cast hers
+down, for she felt as if she were reading her thoughts. The wise
+woman, however, asked no questions, but began to talk about her
+work, approving of some of it, which filled her with arrogance, and
+showing how some of it might have been done better, which filled her
+with resentment. But the wise woman seemed to take no care of what
+she might be thinking, and went straight on with her lesson. By the
+time it was over, the power of reading thoughts would not have been
+necessary to a knowledge of what was in the mind of Agnes, for it
+had all come to the surface--that is up into her face, which is the
+surface of the mind. Ere it had time to sink down again, the wise
+woman caught up the little mirror, and held it before her: Agnes saw
+her Somebody--the very embodiment of miserable conceit and ugly
+ill-temper. She gave such a scream of horror that the wise woman
+pitied her, and laying aside the mirror, took her upon her knees,
+and talked to her most kindly and solemnly; in particular about the
+necessity of destroying the ugly things that come out of the
+heart--so ugly that they make the very face over them ugly also.
+
+And what was Agnes doing all the time the wise woman was talking to
+her? Would you believe it?--instead of thinking how to kill the ugly
+things in her heart, she was with all her might resolving to be more
+careful of her face, that is, to keep down the things in her heart
+so that they should not show in her face, she was resolving to be a
+hypocrite as well as a self-worshipper. Her heart was wormy, and the
+worms were eating very fast at it now.
+
+Then the wise woman laid her gently down upon the heather-bed, and
+she fell fast asleep, and had an awful dream about her Somebody.
+
+When she woke in the morning, instead of getting up to do the work
+of the house, she lay thinking--to evil purpose. In place of taking
+her dream as a warning, and thinking over what the wise woman had
+said the night before, she communed with herself in this fashion:--
+
+"If I stay here longer, I shall be miserable, It is nothing better
+than slavery. The old witch shows me horrible things in the day to
+set me dreaming horrible things in the night. If I don't run away,
+that frightful blue prison and the disgusting girl will come back,
+and I shall go out of my mind. How I do wish I could find the way to
+the good king's palace! I shall go and look at the picture again--if
+it be a picture--as soon as I've got my clothes on. The work can
+wait. It's not my work. It's the old witch's; and she ought to do it
+herself."
+
+She jumped out of bed, and hurried on her clothes. There was no wise
+woman to be seen; and she hastened into the hall. There was the
+picture, with the marble palace, and the proclamation shining in
+letters of gold upon its gates of brass. She stood before it, and
+gazed and gazed; and all the time it kept growing upon her in some
+strange way, until at last she was fully persuaded that it was no
+picture, but a real city, square, and marble palace, seen through a
+framed opening in the wall. She ran up to the frame, stepped over
+it, felt the wind blow upon her cheek, heard the sound of a closing
+door behind her, and was free. FREE was she, with that creature
+inside her?
+
+The same moment a terrible storm of thunder and lightning, wind and
+rain, came on. The uproar was appalling. Agnes threw herself upon
+the ground, hid her face in her hands, and there lay until it was
+over. As soon as she felt the sun shining on her, she rose. There
+was the city far away on the horizon. Without once turning to take a
+farewell look of the place she was leaving, she set off, as fast as
+her feet would carry her, in the direction of the city. So eager was
+she, that again and again she fell, but only to get up, and run on
+faster than before.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+
+
+
+
+The shepherdess carried Rosamond home, gave her a warm bath in the
+tub in which she washed her linen, made her some bread-and-milk, and
+after she had eaten it, put her to bed in Agnes's crib, where she
+slept all the rest of that day and all the following night.
+
+When at last she opened her eyes, it was to see around her a far
+poorer cottage than the one she had left--very bare and
+uncomfortable indeed, she might well have thought; but she had come
+through such troubles of late, in the way of hunger and weariness
+and cold and fear, that she was not altogether in her ordinary mood
+of fault-finding, and so was able to lie enjoying the thought that
+at length she was safe, and going to be fed and kept warm. The idea
+of doing any thing in return for shelter and food and clothes, did
+not, however, even cross her mind.
+
+But the shepherdess was one of that plentiful number who can be
+wiser concerning other women's children than concerning their own.
+Such will often give you very tolerable hints as to how you ought to
+manage your children, and will find fault neatly enough with the
+system you are trying to carry out; but all their wisdom goes off in
+talking, and there is none left for doing what they have themselves
+said. There is one road talk never finds, and that is the way into
+the talker's own hands and feet. And such never seem to know
+themselves--not even when they are reading about themselves in
+print. Still, not being specially blinded in any direction but their
+own, they can sometimes even act with a little sense towards
+children who are not theirs. They are affected with a sort of
+blindness like that which renders some people incapable of seeing,
+except sideways.
+
+She came up to the bed, looked at the princess, and saw that she was
+better. But she did not like her much. There was no mark of a
+princess about her, and never had been since she began to run alone.
+True, hunger had brought down her fat cheeks, but it had not turned
+down her impudent nose, or driven the sullenness and greed from her
+mouth. Nothing but the wise woman could do that--and not even she,
+without the aid of the princess herself. So the shepherdess thought
+what a poor substitute she had got for her own lovely Agnes--who was
+in fact equally repulsive, only in a way to which she had got used;
+for the selfishness in her love had blinded her to the thin pinched
+nose and the mean self-satisfied mouth. It was well for the
+princess, though, sad as it is to say, that the shepherdess did not
+take to her, for then she would most likely have only done her harm
+instead of good.
+
+"Now, my girl," she said, "you must get up, and do something. We
+can't keep idle folk here."
+
+"I'm not a folk," said Rosamond; "I'm a princess."
+
+"A pretty princess--with a nose like that! And all in rags too! If
+you tell such stories, I shall soon let you know what I think of
+you."
+
+Rosamond then understood that the mere calling herself a princess,
+without having any thing to show for it, was of no use. She obeyed
+and rose, for she was hungry; but she had to sweep the floor ere she
+had any thing to eat.
+
+The shepherd came in to breakfast, and was kinder than his wife. He
+took her up in his arms and would have kissed her; but she took it
+as an insult from a man whose hands smelt of tar, and kicked and
+screamed with rage. The poor man, finding he had made a mistake, set
+her down at once. But to look at the two, one might well have judged
+it condescension rather than rudeness in such a man to kiss such a
+child. He was tall, and almost stately, with a thoughtful forehead,
+bright eyes, eagle nose, and gentle mouth; while the princess was
+such as I have described her.
+
+Not content with being set down and let alone, she continued to
+storm and scold at the shepherd, crying she was a princess, and
+would like to know what right he had to touch her! But he only
+looked down upon her from the height of his tall person with a
+benignant smile, regarding her as a spoiled little ape whose mother
+had flattered her by calling her a princess.
+
+"Turn her out of doors, the ungrateful hussy!" cried his wife. "With
+your bread and your milk inside her ugly body, this is what she
+gives you for it! Troth, I'm paid for carrying home such an ill-bred
+tramp in my arms! My own poor angel Agnes! As if that ill-tempered
+toad were one hair like her!"
+
+These words drove the princess beside herself; for those who are
+most given to abuse can least endure it. With fists and feet and
+teeth, as was her wont, she rushed at the shepherdess, whose hand
+was already raised to deal her a sound box on the ear, when a better
+appointed minister of vengeance suddenly showed himself. Bounding in
+at the cottage-door came one of the sheep-dogs, who was called
+Prince, and whom I shall not refer to with a WHICH, because he was a
+very superior animal indeed, even for a sheep-dog, which is the most
+intelligent of dogs: he flew at the princess, knocked her down, and
+commenced shaking her so violently as to tear her miserable clothes
+to pieces. Used, however, to mouthing little lambs, he took care not
+to hurt her much, though for her good he left her a blue nip or two
+by way of letting her imagine what biting might be. His master,
+knowing he would not injure her, thought it better not to call him
+off, and in half a minute he left her of his own accord, and,
+casting a glance of indignant rebuke behind him as he went, walked
+slowly to the hearth, where he laid himself down with his tail
+toward her. She rose, terrified almost to death, and would have
+crept again into Agnes's crib for refuge; but the shepherdess
+cried--
+
+"Come, come, princess! I'll have no skulking to bed in the good
+daylight. Go and clean your master's Sunday boots there."
+
+"I will not!" screamed the princess, and ran from the house.
+
+"Prince!" cried the shepherdess, and up jumped the dog, and looked
+in her face, wagging his bushy tail.
+
+"Fetch her back," she said, pointing to the door.
+
+With two or three bounds Prince caught the princess, again threw her
+down, and taking her by her clothes dragged her back into the
+cottage, and dropped her at his mistress' feet, where she lay like a
+bundle of rags.
+
+"Get up," said the shepherdess.
+
+Rosamond got up as pale as death.
+
+"Go and clean the boots."
+
+"I don't know how."
+
+"Go and try. There are the brushes, and yonder is the blacking-pot."
+
+Instructing her how to black boots, it came into the thought of the
+shepherdess what a fine thing it would be if she could teach this
+miserable little wretch, so forsaken and ill-bred, to be a good,
+well-behaved, respectable child. She was hardly the woman to do it,
+but every thing well meant is a help, and she had the wisdom to beg
+her husband to place Prince under her orders for a while, and not
+take him to the hill as usual, that he might help her in getting the
+princess into order.
+
+When the husband was gone, and his boots, with the aid of her own
+finishing touches, at last quite respectably brushed, the
+shepherdess told the princess that she might go and play for a
+while, only she must not go out of sight of the cottage-door.
+
+The princess went right gladly, with the firm intention, however, of
+getting out of sight by slow degrees, and then at once taking to her
+heels. But no sooner was she over the threshold than the shepherdess
+said to the dog, "Watch her;" and out shot Prince.
+
+The moment she saw him, Rosamond threw herself on her face,
+trembling from head to foot. But the dog had no quarrel with her,
+and of the violence against which he always felt bound to protest in
+dog fashion, there was no sign in the prostrate shape before him; so
+he poked his nose under her, turned her over, and began licking her
+face and hands. When she saw that he meant to be friendly, her love
+for animals, which had had no indulgence for a long time now, came
+wide awake, and in a little while they were romping and rushing
+about, the best friends in the world.
+
+Having thus seen one enemy, as she thought, changed to a friend, she
+began to resume her former plan, and crept cunningly farther and
+farther. At length she came to a little hollow, and instantly rolled
+down into it. Finding then that she was out of sight of the cottage,
+she ran off at full speed.
+
+But she had not gone more than a dozen paces, when she heard a
+growling rush behind her, and the next instant was on the ground,
+with the dog standing over her, showing his teeth, and flaming at
+her with his eyes. She threw her arms round his neck, and
+immediately he licked her face, and let her get up. But the moment
+she would have moved a step farther from the cottage, there he was
+it front of her, growling, and showing his teeth. She saw it was of
+no use, and went back with him.
+
+Thus was the princess provided with a dog for a private tutor--just
+the right sort for her.
+
+Presently the shepherdess appeared at the door and called her. She
+would have disregarded the summons, but Prince did his best to let
+her know that, until she could obey herself, she must obey him. So
+she went into the cottage, and there the shepherdess ordered her to
+peel the potatoes for dinner. She sulked and refused. Here Prince
+could do nothing to help his mistress, but she had not to go far to
+find another ally.
+
+"Very well, Miss Princess!" she said; "we shall soon see how you
+like to go without when dinner-time comes."
+
+Now the princess had very little foresight, and the idea of future
+hunger would have moved her little; but happily, from her game of
+romps with Prince, she had begun to be hungry already, and so the
+threat had force. She took the knife and began to peel the potatoes.
+
+By slow degrees the princess improved a little. A few more outbreaks
+of passion, and a few more savage attacks from Prince, and she had
+learned to try to restrain herself when she felt the passion coming
+on; while a few dinnerless afternoons entirely opened her eyes to
+the necessity of working in order to eat. Prince was her first, and
+Hunger her second dog-counsellor.
+
+But a still better thing was that she soon grew very fond of Prince.
+Towards the gaining of her affections, he had three advantages:
+first, his nature was inferior to hers; next, he was a beast; and
+last, she was afraid of him; for so spoiled was she that she could
+more easily love what was below than what was above her, and a
+beast, than one of her own kind, and indeed could hardly have ever
+come to love any thing much that she had not first learned to fear,
+and the white teeth and flaming eyes of the angry Prince were more
+terrible to her than any thing had yet been, except those of the
+wolf, which she had now forgotten. Then again, he was such a
+delightful playfellow, that so long as she neither lost her temper,
+nor went against orders, she might do almost any thing she pleased
+with him. In fact, such was his influence upon her, that she who had
+scoffed at the wisest woman in the whole world, and derided the
+wishes of her own father and mother, came at length to regard this
+dog as a superior being, and to look up to him as well as love him.
+And this was best of all.
+
+The improvement upon her, in the course of a month, was plain. She
+had quite ceased to go into passions, and had actually begun to take
+a little interest in her work and try to do it well.
+
+Still, the change was mostly an outside one. I do not mean that she
+was pretending. Indeed she had never been given to pretence of any
+sort. But the change was not in HER, only in her mood. A second
+change of circumstances would have soon brought a second change of
+behavior; and, so long as that was possible, she continued the same
+sort of person she had always been. But if she had not gained much,
+a trifle had been gained for her: a little quietness and order of
+mind, and hence a somewhat greater possibility of the first idea of
+right arising in it, whereupon she would begin to see what a
+wretched creature she was, and must continue until she herself was
+right.
+
+Meantime the wise woman had been watching her when she least fancied
+it, and taking note of the change that was passing upon her. Out of
+the large eyes of a gentle sheep she had been watching her--a sheep
+that puzzled the shepherd; for every now and then she would appear
+in his flock, and he would catch sight of her two or three times in
+a day, sometimes for days together, yet he never saw her when he
+looked for her, and never when he counted the flock into the fold at
+night. He knew she was not one of his; but where could she come
+from, and where could she go to? For there was no other flock within
+many miles, and he never could get near enough to her to see whether
+or not she was marked. Nor was Prince of the least use to him for
+the unravelling of the mystery; for although, as often as he told
+him to fetch the strange sheep, he went bounding to her at once, it
+was only to lie down at her feet.
+
+At length, however, the wise woman had made up her mind, and after
+that the strange sheep no longer troubled the shepherd.
+
+As Rosamond improved, the shepherdess grew kinder. She gave her all
+Agnes's clothes, and began to treat her much more like a daughter.
+Hence she had a great deal of liberty after the little work required
+of her was over, and would often spend hours at a time with the
+shepherd, watching the sheep and the dogs, and learning a little
+from seeing how Prince, and the others as well, managed their
+charge--how they never touched the sheep that did as they were told
+and turned when they were bid, but jumped on a disobedient flock,
+and ran along their backs, biting, and barking, and half choking
+themselves with mouthfuls of their wool.
+
+Then also she would play with the brooks, and learn their songs, and
+build bridges over them. And sometimes she would be seized with such
+delight of heart that she would spread out her arms to the wind, and
+go rushing up the hill till her breath left her, when she would
+tumble down in the heather, and lie there till it came back again.
+
+A noticeable change had by this time passed also on her countenance.
+Her coarse shapeless mouth had begun to show a glimmer of lines and
+curves about it, and the fat had not returned with the roses to her
+cheeks, so that her eyes looked larger than before; while, more
+noteworthy still, the bridge of her nose had grown higher, so that
+it was less of the impudent, insignificant thing inherited from a
+certain great-great-great-grandmother, who had little else to leave
+her. For a long time, it had fitted her very well, for it was just
+like her; but now there was ground for alteration, and already the
+granny who gave it her would not have recognized it. It was growing
+a little liker Prince's; and Prince's was a long, perceptive,
+sagacious nose,--one that was seldom mistaken.
+
+One day about noon, while the sheep were mostly lying down, and the
+shepherd, having left them to the care of the dogs, was himself
+stretched under the shade of a rock a little way apart, and the
+princess sat knitting, with Prince at her feet, lying in wait for a
+snap at a great fly, for even he had his follies--Rosamond saw a
+poor woman come toiling up the hill, but took little notice of her
+until she was passing, a few yards off, when she heard her utter the
+dog's name in a low voice.
+
+Immediately on the summons, Prince started up and followed her--with
+hanging head, but gently-wagging tail. At first the princess thought
+he was merely taking observations, and consulting with his nose
+whether she was respectable or not, but she soon saw that he was
+following her in meek submission. Then she sprung to her feet and
+cried, "Prince, Prince!" But Prince only turned his head and gave
+her an odd look, as if he were trying to smile, and could not. Then
+the princess grew angry, and ran after him, shouting, "Prince, come
+here directly." Again Prince turned his head, but this time to growl
+and show his teeth.
+
+The princess flew into one of her forgotten rages, and picking up a
+stone, flung it at the woman. Prince turned and darted at her, with
+fury in his eyes, and his white teeth gleaming. At the awful sight
+the princess turned also, and would have fled, but he was upon her
+in a moment, and threw her to the ground, and there she lay.
+
+It was evening when she came to herself. A cool twilight wind, that
+somehow seemed to come all the way from the stars, was blowing upon
+her. The poor woman and Prince, the shepherd and his sheep, were all
+gone, and she was left alone with the wind upon the heather.
+
+She felt sad, weak, and, perhaps, for the first time in her life, a
+little ashamed. The violence of which she had been guilty had
+vanished from her spirit, and now lay in her memory with the calm
+morning behind it, while in front the quiet dusky night was now
+closing in the loud shame betwixt a double peace. Between the two
+her passion looked ugly. It pained her to remember. She felt it was
+hateful, and HERS.
+
+But, alas, Prince was gone! That horrid woman had taken him away!
+The fury rose again in her heart, and raged--until it came to her
+mind how her dear Prince would have flown at her throat if he had
+seen her in such a passion. The memory calmed her, and she rose and
+went home. There, perhaps, she would find Prince, for surely he
+could never have been such a silly dog as go away altogether with a
+strange woman!
+
+She opened the door and went in. Dogs were asleep all about the
+cottage, it seemed to her, but nowhere was Prince. She crept away to
+her little bed, and cried herself asleep.
+
+In the morning the shepherd and shepherdess were indeed glad to find
+she had come home, for they thought she had run away.
+
+"Where is Prince?" she cried, the moment she waked.
+
+"His mistress has taken him," answered the shepherd.
+
+"Was that woman his mistress?"
+
+"I fancy so. He followed her as if he had known her all his life. I
+am very sorry to lose him, though."
+
+The poor woman had gone close past the rock where the shepherd lay.
+He saw her coming, and thought of the strange sheep which had been
+feeding beside him when he lay down. "Who can she be?" he said to
+himself; but when he noted how Prince followed her, without even
+looking up at him as he passed, he remembered how Prince had come to
+him. And this was how: as he lay in bed one fierce winter morning,
+just about to rise, he heard the voice of a woman call to him
+through the storm, "Shepherd, I have brought you a dog. Be good to
+him. I will come again and fetch him away." He dressed as quickly as
+he could, and went to the door. It was half snowed up, but on the
+top of the white mound before it stood Prince. And now he had gone
+as mysteriously as he had come, and he felt sad.
+
+Rosamond was very sorry too, and hence when she saw the looks of the
+shepherd and shepherdess, she was able to understand them. And she
+tried for a while to behave better to them because of their sorrow.
+So the loss of the dog brought them all nearer to each other.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+
+
+
+
+After the thunder-storm, Agnes did not meet with a single
+obstruction or misadventure. Everybody was strangely polite, gave
+her whatever she desired, and answered her questions, but asked none
+in return, and looked all the time as if her departure would be a
+relief. They were afraid, in fact, from her appearance, lest she
+should tell them that she was lost, when they would be bound, on
+pain of public execution, to take her to the palace.
+
+But no sooner had she entered the city than she saw it would hardly
+do to present herself as a lost child at the palace-gates; for how
+were they to know that she was not an impostor, especially since she
+really was one, having run away from the wise woman? So she wandered
+about looking at every thing until she was tired, and bewildered by
+the noise and confusion all around her. The wearier she got, the
+more was she pushed in every direction. Having been used to a whole
+hill to wander upon, she was very awkward in the crowded streets,
+and often on the point of being run over by the horses, which seemed
+to her to be going every way like a frightened flock. She spoke to
+several persons, but no one stopped to answer her; and at length,
+her courage giving way, she felt lost indeed, and began to cry. A
+soldier saw her, and asked what was the matter.
+
+"I've nowhere to go to," she sobbed.
+
+"Where's your mother?" asked the soldier.
+
+"I don't know," answered Agnes. "I was carried off by an old woman,
+who then went away and left me. I don't know where she is, or where
+I am myself."
+
+"Come," said the soldier, "this is a case for his Majesty."
+
+So saying, he took her by the hand, led her to the palace, and
+begged an audience of the king and queen. The porter glanced at
+Agnes, immediately admitted them, and showed them into a great
+splendid room, where the king and queen sat every day to review lost
+children, in the hope of one day thus finding their Rosamond. But
+they were by this time beginning to get tired of it. The moment they
+cast their eyes upon Agnes, the queen threw back her head, threw up
+her hands, and cried, "What a miserable, conceited, white-faced
+little ape!" and the king turned upon the soldier in wrath, and
+cried, forgetting his own decree, "What do you mean by bringing such
+a dirty, vulgar-looking, pert creature into my palace? The dullest
+soldier in my army could never for a moment imagine a child like
+THAT, one hair's-breadth like the lovely angel we lost!"
+
+"I humbly beg your Majesty's pardon," said the soldier, "but what
+was I to do? There stands your Majesty's proclamation in gold
+letters on the brazen gates of the palace."
+
+"I shall have it taken down," said the king. "Remove the child."
+
+"Please your Majesty, what am I to do with her?"
+
+"Take her home with you."
+
+"I have six already, sire, and do not want her."
+
+"Then drop her where you picked her up."
+
+"If I do, sire, some one else will find her and bring her back to
+your Majesties."
+
+"That will never do," said the king. "I cannot bear to look at her."
+
+"For all her ugliness," said the queen, "she is plainly lost, and so
+is our Rosamond."
+
+"It may be only a pretence, to get into the palace," said the king.
+
+"Take her to the head scullion, soldier," said the queen, "and tell
+her to make her useful. If she should find out she has been
+pretending to be lost, she must let me know."
+
+The soldier was so anxious to get rid of her, that he caught her up
+in his arms, hurried her from the room, found his way to the
+scullery, and gave her, trembling with fear, in charge to the head
+maid, with the queen's message.
+
+As it was evident that the queen had no favor for her, the servants
+did as they pleased with her, and often treated her harshly. Not one
+amongst them liked her, nor was it any wonder, seeing that, with
+every step she took from the wise woman's house, she had grown more
+contemptible, for she had grown more conceited. Every civil answer
+given her, she attributed to the impression she made, not to the
+desire to get rid of her; and every kindness, to approbation of her
+looks and speech, instead of friendliness to a lonely child. Hence
+by this time she was twice as odious as before; for whoever has had
+such severe treatment as the wise woman gave her, and is not the
+better for it, always grows worse than before. They drove her about,
+boxed her ears on the smallest provocation, laid every thing to her
+charge, called her all manner of contemptuous names, jeered and
+scoffed at her awkwardnesses, and made her life so miserable that
+she was in a fair way to forget every thing she had learned, and
+know nothing but how to clean saucepans and kettles.
+
+They would not have been so hard upon her, however, but for her
+irritating behavior. She dared not refuse to do as she was told, but
+she obeyed now with a pursed-up mouth, and now with a contemptuous
+smile. The only thing that sustained her was her constant contriving
+how to get out of the painful position in which she found herself.
+There is but one true way, however, of getting out of any position
+we may be in, and that is, to do the work of it so well that we grow
+fit for a better: I need not say this was not the plan upon which
+Agnes was cunning enough to fix.
+
+She had soon learned from the talk around her the reason of the
+proclamation which had brought her hither.
+
+"Was the lost princess so very beautiful?" she said one day to the
+youngest of her fellow-servants.
+
+"Beautiful!" screamed the maid; "she was just the ugliest little
+toad you ever set eyes upon."
+
+"What was she like?" asked Agnes.
+
+"She was about your size, and quite as ugly, only not in the same
+way; for she had red cheeks, and a cocked little nose, and the
+biggest, ugliest mouth you ever saw."
+
+Agnes fell a-thinking.
+
+"Is there a picture of her anywhere in the palace?" she asked.
+
+"How should I know? You can ask a housemaid."
+
+Agnes soon learned that there was one, and contrived to get a peep
+of it. Then she was certain of what she had suspected from the
+description given of her, namely, that she was the same she had seen
+in the picture at the wise woman's house. The conclusion followed,
+that the lost princess must be staying with her father and mother,
+for assuredly in the picture she wore one of her frocks.
+
+She went to the head scullion, and with humble manner, but proud
+heart, begged her to procure for her the favor of a word with the
+queen.
+
+"A likely thing indeed!" was the answer, accompanied by a resounding
+box on the ear.
+
+She tried the head cook next, but with no better success, and so was
+driven to her meditations again, the result of which was that she
+began to drop hints that she knew something about the princess. This
+came at length to the queen's ears, and she sent for her.
+
+Absorbed in her own selfish ambitions, Agnes never thought of the
+risk to which she was about to expose her parents, but told the
+queen that in her wanderings she had caught sight of just such a
+lovely creature as she described the princess, only dressed like a
+peasant--saying, that, if the king would permit her to go and look
+for her, she had little doubt of bringing her back safe and sound
+within a few weeks.
+
+But although she spoke the truth, she had such a look of cunning on
+her pinched face, that the queen could not possibly trust her, but
+believed that she made the proposal merely to get away, and have
+money given her for her journey. Still there was a chance, and she
+would not say any thing until she had consulted the king.
+
+Then they had Agnes up before the lord chancellor, who, after much
+questioning of her, arrived at last, he thought, at some notion of
+the part of the country described by her--that was, if she spoke
+the truth, which, from her looks and behavior, he also considered
+entirely doubtful. Thereupon she was ordered back to the kitchen,
+and a band of soldiers, under a clever lawyer, sent out to search
+every foot of the supposed region. They were commanded not to return
+until they brought with them, bound hand and foot, such a shepherd
+pair as that of which they received a full description.
+
+And now Agnes was worse off than before. For to her other miseries
+was added the fear of what would befall her when it was discovered
+that the persons of whom they were in quest, and whom she was
+certain they must find, were her own father and mother.
+
+By this time the king and queen were so tired of seeing lost
+children, genuine or pretended--for they cared for no child any
+longer than there seemed a chance of its turning out their
+child--that with this new hope, which, however poor and vague at
+first, soon began to grow upon such imaginations as they had, they
+commanded the proclamation to be taken down from the palace gates,
+and directed the various sentries to admit no child whatever, lost
+or found, be the reason or pretence what it might, until further
+orders.
+
+"I'm sick of children!" said the king to his secretary, as he
+finished dictating the direction.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+
+
+
+
+After Prince was gone, the princess, by degrees, fell back into some
+of her bad old ways, from which only the presence of the dog, not
+her own betterment, had kept her. She never grew nearly so selfish
+again, but she began to let her angry old self lift up its head once
+more, until by and by she grew so bad that the shepherdess declared
+she should not stop in the house a day longer, for she was quite
+unendurable.
+
+"It is all very well for you, husband," she said, "for you haven't
+her all day about you, and only see the best of her. But if you had
+her in work instead of play hours, you would like her no better than
+I do. And then it's not her ugly passions only, but when she's in
+one of her tantrums, it's impossible to get any work out of her. At
+such times she's just as obstinate as--as--as"--
+
+She was going to say "as Agnes," but the feelings of a mother
+overcame her, and she could not utter the words.
+
+"In fact," she said instead, "she makes my life miserable."
+
+The shepherd felt he had no right to tell his wife she must submit
+to have her life made miserable, and therefore, although he was
+really much attached to Rosamond, he would not interfere; and the
+shepherdess told her she must look out for another place.
+
+The princess was, however, this much better than before, even in
+respect of her passions, that they were not quite so bad, and after
+one was over, she was really ashamed of it. But not once, ever since
+the departure of Prince had she tried to check the rush of the evil
+temper when it came upon her. She hated it when she was out of it,
+and that was something; but while she was in it, she went full swing
+with it wherever the prince of the power of it pleased to carry her.
+Nor was this all: although she might by this time have known well
+enough that as soon as she was out of it she was certain to be
+ashamed of it, she would yet justify it to herself with twenty
+different arguments that looked very good at the time, but would
+have looked very poor indeed afterwards, if then she had ever
+remembered them.
+
+She was not sorry to leave the shepherd's cottage, for she felt
+certain of soon finding her way back to her father and mother; and
+she would, indeed, have set out long before, but that her foot had
+somehow got hurt when Prince gave her his last admonition, and she
+had never since been able for long walks, which she sometimes blamed
+as the cause of her temper growing worse. But if people are
+good-tempered only when they are comfortable, what thanks have
+they?--Her foot was now much better; and as soon as the shepherdess
+had thus spoken, she resolved to set out at once, and work or beg
+her way home. At the moment she was quite unmindful of what she owed
+the good people, and, indeed, was as yet incapable of understanding
+a tenth part of her obligation to them. So she bade them good by
+without a tear, and limped her way down the hill, leaving the
+shepherdess weeping, and the shepherd looking very grave.
+
+When she reached the valley she followed the course of the stream,
+knowing only that it would lead her away from the hill where the
+sheep fed, into richer lands where were farms and cattle. Rounding
+one of the roots of the hill she saw before her a poor woman walking
+slowly along the road with a burden of heather upon her back, and
+presently passed her, but had gone only a few paces farther when she
+heard her calling after her in a kind old voice--
+
+"Your shoe-tie is loose, my child."
+
+But Rosamond was growing tired, for her foot had become painful, and
+so she was cross, and neither returned answer, nor paid heed to the
+warning. For when we are cross, all our other faults grow busy, and
+poke up their ugly heads like maggots, and the princess's old
+dislike to doing any thing that came to her with the least air of
+advice about it returned in full force.
+
+"My child," said the woman again, "if you don't fasten your
+shoe-tie, it will make you fall."
+
+"Mind your own business," said Rosamond, without even turning her
+head, and had not gone more than three steps when she fell flat on
+her face on the path. She tried to get up, but the effort forced
+from her a scream, for she had sprained the ankle of the foot that
+was already lame.
+
+The old woman was by her side instantly.
+
+"Where are you hurt, child?" she asked, throwing down her burden and
+kneeling beside her.
+
+"Go away," screamed Rosamond. "YOU made me fall, you bad woman!"
+
+The woman made no reply, but began to feel her joints, and soon
+discovered the sprain. Then, in spite of Rosamond's abuse, and the
+violent pushes and even kicks she gave her, she took the hurt ankle
+in her hands, and stroked and pressed it, gently kneading it, as it
+were, with her thumbs, as if coaxing every particle of the muscles
+into its right place. Nor had she done so long before Rosamond lay
+still. At length she ceased, and said:--
+
+"Now, my child, you may get up."
+
+"I can't get up, and I'm not your child," cried Rosamond. "Go away."
+
+Without another word the woman left her, took up her burden, and
+continued her journey.
+
+In a little while Rosamond tried to get up, and not only succeeded,
+but found she could walk, and, indeed, presently discovered that her
+ankle and foot also were now perfectly well.
+
+"I wasn't much hurt after all," she said to herself, nor sent a
+single grateful thought after the poor woman, whom she speedily
+passed once more upon the road without even a greeting.
+
+Late in the afternoon she came to a spot where the path divided into
+two, and was taking the one she liked the look of better, when she
+started at the sound of the poor woman's voice, whom she thought she
+had left far behind, again calling her. She looked round, and there
+she was, toiling under her load of heather as before.
+
+"You are taking the wrong turn, child." she cried.
+
+"How can you tell that?" said Rosamond. "You know nothing about
+where I want to go."
+
+"I know that road will take you where you won't want to go," said
+the woman.
+
+"I shall know when I get there, then," returned Rosamond, "and no
+thanks to you."
+
+She set off running. The woman took the other path, and was soon out
+of sight.
+
+By and by, Rosamond found herself in the midst of a peat-moss--a
+flat, lonely, dismal, black country. She thought, however, that the
+road would soon lead her across to the other side of it among the
+farms, and went on without anxiety. But the stream, which had
+hitherto been her guide, had now vanished; and when it began to grow
+dark, Rosamond found that she could no longer distinguish the track.
+She turned, therefore, but only to find that the same darkness
+covered it behind as well as before. Still she made the attempt to
+go back by keeping as direct a line as she could, for the path was
+straight as an arrow. But she could not see enough even to start her
+in a line, and she had not gone far before she found herself hemmed
+in, apparently on every side, by ditches and pools of black, dismal,
+slimy water. And now it was so dark that she could see nothing more
+than the gleam of a bit of clear sky now and then in the water.
+Again and again she stepped knee-deep in black mud, and once tumbled
+down in the shallow edge of a terrible pool; after which she gave up
+the attempt to escape the meshes of the watery net, stood still, and
+began to cry bitterly, despairingly. She saw now that her
+unreasonable anger had made her foolish as well as rude, and felt
+that she was justly punished for her wickedness to the poor woman
+who had been so friendly to her. What would Prince think of her, if
+he knew? She cast herself on the ground, hungry, and cold, and
+weary.
+
+Presently, she thought she saw long creatures come heaving out of
+the black pools. A toad jumped upon her, and she shrieked, and
+sprang to her feet, and would have run away headlong, when she spied
+in the distance a faint glimmer. She thought it was a Will-o'-
+the-wisp. What could he be after? Was he looking for her? She dared
+not run, lest he should see and pounce upon her. The light came
+nearer, and grew brighter and larger. Plainly, the little fiend was
+looking for her--he would torment her. After many twistings and
+turnings among the pools, it came straight towards her, and she
+would have shrieked, but that terror made her dumb.
+
+It came nearer and nearer, and lo! it was borne by a dark figure,
+with a burden on its back: it was the poor woman, and no demon, that
+was looking for her! She gave a scream of joy, fell down weeping at
+her feet, and clasped her knees. Then the poor woman threw away her
+burden, laid down her lantern, took the princess up in her arms,
+folded her cloak around her, and having taken up her lantern again,
+carried her slowly and carefully through the midst of the black
+pools, winding hither and thither. All night long she carried her
+thus, slowly and wearily, until at length the darkness grew a little
+thinner, an uncertain hint of light came from the east, and the poor
+woman, stopping on the brow of a little hill, opened her cloak, and
+set the princess down.
+
+"I can carry you no farther," she said. "Sit there on the grass till
+the light comes. I will stand here by you."
+
+Rosamond had been asleep. Now she rubbed her eyes and looked, but it
+was too dark to see any thing more than that there was a sky over
+her head. Slowly the light grew, until she could see the form of the
+poor woman standing in front of her; and as it went on growing, she
+began to think she had seen her somewhere before, till all at once
+she thought of the wise woman, and saw it must be she. Then she was
+so ashamed that she bent down her head, and could look at her no
+longer. But the poor woman spoke, and the voice was that of the wise
+woman, and every word went deep into the heart of the princess.
+
+"Rosamond," she said, "all this time, ever since I carried you from
+your father's palace, I have been doing what I could to make you a
+lovely creature: ask yourself how far I have succeeded."
+
+All her past story, since she found herself first under the wise
+woman's cloak, arose, and glided past the inner eyes of the
+princess, and she saw, and in a measure understood, it all. But she
+sat with her eyes on the ground, and made no sign.
+
+Then said the wise woman:--
+
+"Below there is the forest which surrounds my house. I am going
+home. If you pleage to come there to me, I will help you, in a way I
+could not do now, to be good and lovely. I will wait you there all
+day, but if you start at once, you may be there long before noon. I
+shall have your breakfast waiting for you. One thing more: the
+beasts have not yet all gone home to their holes; but I give you my
+word, not one will touch you so long as you keep coming nearer to my
+house."
+
+She ceased. Rosamond sat waiting to hear something more; but nothing
+came. She looked up; she was alone.
+
+Alone once more! Always being left alone, because she would not
+yield to what was right! Oh, how safe she had felt under the wise
+woman's cloak! She had indeed been good to her, and she had in
+return behaved like one of the hyenas of the awful wood! What a
+wonderful house it was she lived in! And again all her own story
+came up into her brain from her repentant heart.
+
+"Why didn't she take me with her?" she said. "I would have gone
+gladly." And she wept. But her own conscience told her that, in the
+very middle of her shame and desire to be good, she had returned no
+answer to the words of the wise woman; she had sat like a
+tree-stump, and done nothing. She tried to say there was nothing to
+be done; but she knew at once that she could have told the wise
+woman she had been very wicked, and asked her to take her with her.
+Now there was nothing to be done.
+
+"Nothing to be done!" said her conscience. "Cannot you rise, and
+walk down the hill, and through the wood?"
+
+"But the wild beasts!"
+
+"There it is! You don't believe the wise woman yet! Did she not tell
+you the beasts would not touch you?"
+
+"But they are so horrid!"
+
+"Yes, they are; but it would be far better to be eaten up alive by
+them than live on--such a worthless creature as you are. Why,
+you're not fit to be thought about by any but bad ugly creatures."
+
+This was how herself talked to her.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+
+
+
+
+All at once she jumped to her feet, and ran at full speed down the
+hill and into the wood. She heard howlings and yellings on all sides
+of her, but she ran straight on, as near as she could judge. Her
+spirits rose as she ran. Suddenly she saw before her, in the dusk of
+the thick wood, a group of some dozen wolves and hyenas, standing
+all together right in her way, with their green eyes fixed upon her
+staring. She faltered one step, then bethought her of what the wise
+woman had promised, and keeping straight on, dashed right into the
+middle of them. They fled howling, as if she had struck them with
+fire. She was no more afraid after that, and ere the sun was up she
+was out of the wood and upon the heath, which no bad thing could
+step upon and live. With the first peep of the sun above the
+horizon, she saw the little cottage before her, and ran as fast as
+she could run towards it, When she came near it, she saw that the
+door was open, and ran straight into the outstretched arms of the
+wise woman.
+
+The wise woman kissed her and stroked her hair, set her down by the
+fire, and gave her a bowl of bread and milk.
+
+When she had eaten it she drew her before her where she sat, and
+spoke to her thus:--
+
+"Rosamond, if you would be a blessed creature instead of a mere
+wretch, you must submit to be tried."
+
+"Is that something terrible?" asked the princess, turning white.
+
+"No, my child; but it is something very difficult to come well out
+of. Nobody who has not been tried knows how difficult it is; but
+whoever has come well out of it, and those who do not overcome never
+do come out of it, always looks back with horror, not on what she
+has come through, but on the very idea of the possibility of having
+failed, and being still the same miserable creature as before."
+
+"You will tell me what it is before it begins?" said the princess.
+
+"I will not tell you exactly. But I will tell you some things to
+help you. One great danger is that perhaps you will think you are in
+it before it has really begun, and say to yourself, 'Oh! this is
+really nothing to me. It may be a trial to some, but for me I am
+sure it is not worth mentioning.' And then, before you know, it will
+be upon you, and you will fail utterly and shamefully."
+
+"I will be very, very careful," said the princess. "Only don't let
+me be frightened."
+
+"You shall not be frightened, except it be your own doing. You are
+already a brave girl, and there is no occasion to try you more that
+way. I saw how you rushed into the middle of the ugly creatures; and
+as they ran from you, so will all kinds of evil things, as long as
+you keep them outside of you, and do not open the cottage of your
+heart to let them in. I will tell you something more about what you
+will have to go through.
+
+"Nobody can be a real princess--do not imagine you have yet been any
+thing more than a mock one--until she is a princess over herself,
+that is, until, when she finds herself unwilling to do the thing
+that is right, she makes herself do it. So long as any mood she is
+in makes her do the thing she will be sorry for when that mood is
+over, she is a slave, and no princess. A princess is able to do what
+is right even should she unhappily be in a mood that would make
+another unable to do it. For instance, if you should be cross and
+angry, you are not a whit the less bound to be just, yes, kind
+even--a thing most difficult in such a mood--though ease itself in a
+good mood, loving and sweet. Whoever does what she is bound to do,
+be she the dirtiest little girl in the street, is a princess,
+worshipful, honorable. Nay, more; her might goes farther than she
+could send it, for if she act so, the evil mood will wither and die,
+and leave her loving and clean.--Do you understand me, dear
+Rosamond?"
+
+As she spoke, the wise woman laid her hand on her head and
+looked--oh, so lovingly!--into her eyes.
+
+"I am not sure," said the princess, humbly.
+
+"Perhaps you will understand me better if I say it just comes to
+this, that you must NOT DO what is wrong, however much you are
+inclined to do it, and you must DO what is right, however much you
+are disinclined to do it."
+
+"I understand that," said the princess.
+
+"I am going, then, to put you in one of the mood-chambers of which I
+have many in the house. Its mood will come upon you, and you will
+have to deal with it."
+
+She rose and took her by the hand. The princess trembled a little,
+but never thought of resisting.
+
+The wise woman led her into the great hall with the pictures, and
+through a door at the farther end, opening upon another large hall,
+which was circular, and had doors close to each other all round it.
+Of these she opened one, pushed the princess gently in, and closed
+it behind her.
+
+The princess found herself in her old nursery. Her little white
+rabbit came to meet her in a lumping canter as if his back were
+going to tumble over his head. Her nurse, in her rocking-chair by
+the chimney corner, sat just as she had used. The fire burned
+brightly, and on the table were many of her wonderful toys, on
+which, however, she now looked with some contempt. Her nurse did not
+seem at all surprised to see her, any more than if the princess had
+but just gone from the room and returned again.
+
+"Oh! how different I am from what I used to be!" thought the
+princess to herself, looking from her toys to her nurse. "The wise
+woman has done me so much good already! I will go and see mamma at
+once, and tell her I am very glad to be at home again, and very
+sorry I was so naughty."
+
+She went towards the door.
+
+"Your queen-mamma, princess, cannot see you now," said her nurse.
+
+"I have yet to learn that it is my part to take orders from a
+servant," said the princess with temper and dignity.
+
+"I beg your pardon, princess, returned her nurse, politely; "but it
+is my duty to tell you that your queen-mamma is at this moment
+engaged. She is alone with her most intimate friend, the Princess of
+the Frozen Regions."
+
+"I shall see for myself," returned the princess, bridling, and
+walked to the door.
+
+Now little bunny, leap-frogging near the door, happened that moment
+to get about her feet, just as she was going to open it, so that she
+tripped and fell against it, striking her forehead a good blow. She
+caught up the rabbit in a rage, and, crying, "It is all your fault,
+you ugly old wretch!" threw it with violence in her nurse's face.
+
+Her nurse caught the rabbit, and held it to her face, as if seeking
+to sooth its fright. But the rabbit looked very limp and odd, and,
+to her amazement, Rosamond presently saw that the thing was no
+rabbit, but a pocket-handkerchief. The next moment she removed it
+from her face, and Rosamond beheld--not her nurse, but the wise
+woman--standing on her own hearth, while she herself stood by the
+door leading from the cottage into the hall.
+
+"First trial a failure," said the wise woman quietly.
+
+Overcome with shame, Rosamond ran to her, fell down on her knees,
+and hid her face in her dress.
+
+"Need I say any thing?" said the wise woman, stroking her hair.
+
+"No, no," cried the princess. "I am horrid."
+
+"You know now the kind of thing you have to meet: are you ready to
+try again?"
+
+"MAY I try again?" cried the princess, jumping up. "I'm ready. I do
+not think I shall fail this time."
+
+"The trial will be harder."
+
+Rosamond drew in her breath, and set her teeth. The wise woman
+looked at her pitifully, but took her by the hand, led her to the
+round hall, opened the same door, and closed it after her.
+
+The princess expected to find herself again in the nursery, but in
+the wise woman's house no one ever has the same trial twice. She was
+in a beautiful garden, full of blossoming trees and the loveliest
+roses and lilies. A lake was in the middle of it, with a tiny boat.
+So delightful was it that Rosamond forgot all about how or why she
+had come there, and lost herself in the joy of the flowers and the
+trees and the water. Presently came the shout of a child, merry and
+glad, and from a clump of tulip trees rushed a lovely little boy,
+with his arms stretched out to her. She was charmed at the sight,
+ran to meet him, caught him up in her arms, kissed him, and could
+hardly let him go again. But the moment she set him down he ran from
+her towards the lake, looking back as he ran, and crying "Come,
+come."
+
+She followed. He made straight for the boat, clambered into it, and
+held out his hand to help her in. Then he caught up the little
+boat-hook, and pushed away from the shore: there was a great white
+flower floating a few yards off, and that was the little fellow's
+goal. But, alas! no sooner had Rosamond caught sight of it, huge and
+glowing as a harvest moon, than she felt a great desire to have it
+herself. The boy, however, was in the bows of the boat, and caught
+it first. It had a long stem, reaching down to the bottom of the
+water, and for a moment he tugged at it in vain, but at last it gave
+way so suddenly, that he tumbled back with the flower into the
+bottom of the boat. Then Rosamond, almost wild at the danger it was
+in as he struggled to rise, hurried to save it, but somehow between
+them it came in pieces, and all its petals of fretted silver were
+scattered about the boat. When the boy got up, and saw the ruin his
+companion had occasioned, he burst into tears, and having the long
+stalk of the flower still in his hand, struck her with it across the
+face. It did not hurt her much, for he was a very little fellow, but
+it was wet and slimy. She tumbled rather than rushed at him, seized
+him in her arms, tore him from his frightened grasp, and flung him
+into the water. His head struck on the boat as he fell, and he sank
+at once to the bottom, where he lay looking up at her with white
+face and open eyes.
+
+The moment she saw the consequences of her deed she was filled with
+horrible dismay. She tried hard to reach down to him through the
+water, but it was far deeper than it looked, and she could not.
+Neither could she get her eyes to leave the white face: its eyes
+fascinated and fixed hers; and there she lay leaning over the boat
+and staring at the death she had made. But a voice crying, "Ally!
+Ally!" shot to her heart, and springing to her feet she saw a lovely
+lady come running down the grass to the brink of the water with her
+hair flying about her head.
+
+"Where is my Ally?" she shrieked.
+
+But Rosamond could not answer, and only stared at the lady, as she
+had before stared at her drowned boy.
+
+Then the lady caught sight of the dead thing at the bottom of the
+water, and rushed in, and, plunging down, struggled and groped until
+she reached it. Then she rose and stood up with the dead body of her
+little son in her arms, his head hanging back, and the water
+streaming from him.
+
+"See what you have made of him, Rosamond!" she said, holding the
+body out to her; "and this is your second trial, and also a
+failure."
+
+The dead child melted away from her arms, and there she stood, the
+wise woman, on her own hearth, while Rosamond found herself beside
+the little well on the floor of the cottage, with one arm wet up to
+the shoulder. She threw herself on the heather-bed and wept from
+relief and vexation both.
+
+The wise woman walked out of the cottage, shut the door, and left
+her alone. Rosamond was sobbing, so that she did not hear her go.
+When at length she looked up, and saw that the wise woman was gone,
+her misery returned afresh and tenfold, and she wept and wailed. The
+hours passed, the shadows of evening began to fall, and the wise
+woman entered.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+
+
+
+
+She went straight to the bed, and taking Rosamond in her arms, sat
+down with her by the fire.
+
+"My poor child!" she said. "Two terrible failures! And the more the
+harder! They get stronger and stronger. What is to be done?"
+
+"Couldn't you help me?" said Rosamond piteously.
+
+"Perhaps I could, now you ask me," answered the wise woman. "When
+you are ready to try again, we shall see."
+
+"I am very tired of myself," said the princess. "But I can't rest
+till I try again."
+
+"That is the only way to get rid of your weary, shadowy self, and
+find your strong, true self. Come, my child; I will help you all I
+can, for now I CAN help you."
+
+Yet again she led her to the same door, and seemed to the princess
+to send her yet again alone into the room. She was in a forest, a
+place half wild, half tended. The trees were grand, and full of the
+loveliest birds, of all glowing gleaming and radiant colors, which,
+unlike the brilliant birds we know in our world, sang deliciously,
+every one according to his color. The trees were not at all crowded,
+but their leaves were so thick, and their boughs spread so far, that
+it was only here and there a sunbeam could get straight through. All
+the gentle creatures of a forest were there, but no creatures that
+killed, not even a weasel to kill the rabbits, or a beetle to eat
+the snails out of their striped shells. As to the butterflies, words
+would but wrong them if they tried to tell how gorgeous they were.
+The princess's delight was so great that she neither laughed nor
+ran, but walked about with a solemn countenance and stately step.
+
+"But where are the flowers?" she said to herself at length.
+
+They were nowhere. Neither on the high trees, nor on the few shrubs
+that grew here and there amongst them, were there any blossoms; and
+in the grass that grew everywhere there was not a single flower to
+be seen.
+
+"Ah, well!" said Rosamond again to herself, "where all the birds and
+butterflies are living flowers, we can do without the other sort."
+
+Still she could not help feeling that flowers were wanted to make
+the beauty of the forest complete.
+
+Suddenly she came out on a little open glade; and there, on the root
+of a great oak, sat the loveliest little girl, with her lap full of
+flowers of all colors, but of such kinds as Rosamond had never
+before seen. She was playing with them--burying her hands in them,
+tumbling them about, and every now and then picking one from the
+rest, and throwing it away. All the time she never smiled, except
+with her eyes, which were as full as they could hold of the laughter
+of the spirit--a laughter which in this world is never heard, only
+sets the eyes alight with a liquid shining. Rosamond drew nearer,
+for the wonderful creature would have drawn a tiger to her side, and
+tamed him on the way, A few yards from her, she came upon one of her
+cast-away flowers and stooped to pick it up, as well she might where
+none grew save in her own longing. But to her amazement she found,
+instead of a flower thrown away to wither, one fast rooted and quite
+at home. She left it, and went to another; but it also was fast in
+the soil, and growing comfortably in the warm grass. What could it
+mean? One after another she tried, until at length she was satisfied
+that it was the same with every flower the little girl threw from
+her lap.
+
+She watched then until she saw her throw one, and instantly bounded
+to the spot. But the flower had been quicker than she: there it
+grew, fast fixed in the earth, and, she thought, looked at her
+roguishly. Something evil moved in her, and she plucked it.
+
+"Don't! don't!" cried the child. "My flowers cannot live in your
+hands."
+
+Rosamond looked at the flower. It was withered already. She threw it
+from her, offended. The child rose, with difficulty keeping her
+lapful together, picked it up, carried it back, sat down again,
+spoke to it, kissed it, sang to it--oh! such a sweet, childish
+little song!--the princess never could recall a word of it--and
+threw it away. Up rose its little head, and there it was, busy
+growing again!
+
+Rosamond's bad temper soon gave way: the beauty and sweetness of the
+child had overcome it; and, anxious to make friends with her, she
+drew near, and said:
+
+"Won't you give me a little flower, please, you beautiful child?"
+
+"There they are; they are all for you," answered the child, pointing
+with her outstretched arm and forefinger all round.
+
+"But you told me, a minute ago, not to touch them."
+
+"Yes, indeed, I did."
+
+"They can't be mine, if I'm not to touch them."
+
+"If, to call them yours, you must kill them, then they are not
+yours, and never, never can be yours. They are nobody's when they
+are dead."
+
+"But you don't kill them."
+
+"I don't pull them; I throw them away. I live them."
+
+"How is it that you make them grow?"
+
+"I say, 'You darling!' and throw it away and there it is."
+
+"Where do you get them?"
+
+"In my lap."
+
+"I wish you would let me throw one away."
+
+"Have you got any in your lap? Let me see."
+
+"No; I have none."
+
+"Then you can't throw one away, if you haven't got one."
+
+"You are mocking me!" cried the princess.
+
+"I am not mocking you," said the child, looking her full in the
+face, with reproach in her large blue eyes.
+
+"Oh, that's where the flowers come from!" said the princess to
+herself, the moment she saw them, hardly knowing what she meant.
+
+Then the child rose as if hurt, and quickly threw away all the
+flowers she had in her lap, but one by one, and without any sign of
+anger. When they were all gone, she stood a moment, and then, in a
+kind of chanting cry, called, two or three times, "Peggy! Peggy!
+Peggy!"
+
+A low, glad cry, like the whinny of a horse, answered, and,
+presently, out of the wood on the opposite side of the glade, came
+gently trotting the loveliest little snow-white pony, with great
+shining blue wings, half-lifted from his shoulders. Straight towards
+the little girl, neither hurrying nor lingering, he trotted with
+light elastic tread.
+
+Rosamond's love for animals broke into a perfect passion of delight
+at the vision. She rushed to meet the pony with such haste, that,
+although clearly the best trained animal under the sun, he started
+back, plunged, reared, and struck out with his fore-feet ere he had
+time to observe what sort of a creature it was that had so startled
+him. When he perceived it was a little girl, he dropped instantly
+upon all fours, and content with avoiding her, resumed his quiet
+trot in the direction of his mistress. Rosamond stood gazing after
+him in miserable disappointment.
+
+When he reached the child, he laid his head on her shoulder, and she
+put her arm up round his neck; and after she had talked to him a
+little, he turned and came trotting back to the princess.
+
+Almost beside herself with joy, she began caressing him in the rough
+way which, not-withstanding her love for them, she was in the habit
+of using with animals; and she was not gentle enough, in herself
+even, to see that be did not like it, and was only putting up with
+it for the sake of his mistress. But when, that she might jump upon
+his back, she laid hold of one of his wings, and ruffled some of the
+blue feathers, he wheeled suddenly about, gave his long tail a sharp
+whisk which threw her flat on the grass, and, trotting back to his
+mistress, bent down his head before her as if asking excuse for
+ridding himself of the unbearable.
+
+The princess was furious. She had forgotten all her past life up to
+the time when she first saw the child: her beauty had made her
+forget, and yet she was now on the very borders of hating her. What
+she might have done, or rather tried to do, had not Peggy's tail
+struck her down with such force that for a moment she could not
+rise, I cannot tell.
+
+But while she lay half-stunned, her eyes fell on a little flower
+just under them. It stared up in her face like the living thing it
+was, and she could not take her eyes off its face. It was like a
+primrose trying to express doubt instead of confidence. It seemed to
+put her half in mind of something, and she felt as if shame were
+coming. She put out her hand to pluck it; but the moment her fingers
+touched it, the flower withered up, and hung as dead on its stalks
+as if a flame of fire had passed over it.
+
+Then a shudder thrilled through the heart of the princess, and she
+thought with herself, saying--"What sort of a creature am I that the
+flowers wither when I touch them, and the ponies despise me with
+their tails? What a wretched, coarse, ill-bred creature I must be!
+There is that lovely child giving life instead of death to the
+flowers, and a moment ago I was hating her! I am made horrid, and I
+shall be horrid, and I hate myself, and yet I can't help being
+myself!"
+
+She heard the sound of galloping feet, and there was the pony, with
+the child seated betwixt his wings, coming straight on at full speed
+for where she lay.
+
+"I don't care," she said. "They may trample me under their feet if
+they like. I am tired and sick of myself--a creature at whose touch
+the flowers wither!"
+
+On came the winged pony. But while yet some distance off, he gave a
+great bound, spread out his living sails of blue, rose yards and
+yards above her in the air, and alighted as gently as a bird, just a
+few feet on the other side of her. The child slipped down and came
+and kneeled over her.
+
+"Did my pony hurt you?" she said. "I am so sorry!"
+
+"Yes, he hurt me," answered the princess, "but not more than I
+deserved, for I took liberties with him, and he did not like it."
+
+"Oh, you dear!" said the little girl. "I love you for talking so of
+my Peggy. He is a good pony, though a little playful sometimes.
+Would you like a ride upon him?"
+
+"You darling beauty!" cried Rosamond, sobbing. "I do love you so,
+you are so good. How did you become so sweet?"
+
+"Would you like to ride my pony?" repeated the child, with a
+heavenly smile in her eyes.
+
+"No, no; he is fit only for you. My clumsy body would hurt him,"
+said Rosamond.
+
+"You don't mind me having such a pony?" said the child.
+
+"What! mind it?" cried Rosamond, almost indignantly. Then
+remembering certain thoughts that had but a few moments before
+passed through her mind, she looked on the ground and was silent.
+
+"You don't mind it, then?" repeated the child.
+
+"I am very glad there is such a you and such a pony, and that such a
+you has got such a pony," said Rosamond, still looking on the
+ground. "But I do wish the flowers would not die when I touch them.
+I was cross to see you make them grow, but now I should be content
+if only I did not make them wither."
+
+As she spoke, she stroked the little girl's bare feet, which were by
+her, half buried in the soft moss, and as she ended she laid her
+cheek on them and kissed them.
+
+"Dear princess!" said the little girl, "the flowers will not always
+wither at your touch. Try now--only do not pluck it. Flowers ought
+never to be plucked except to give away. Touch it gently."
+
+A silvery flower, something like a snow-drop, grew just within her
+reach. Timidly she stretched out her hand and touched it. The flower
+trembled, but neither shrank nor withered.
+
+"Touch it again," said the child.
+
+It changed color a little, and Rosamond fancied it grew larger.
+
+"Touch it again," said the child.
+
+It opened and grew until it was as large as a narcissus, and changed
+and deepened in color till it was a red glowing gold.
+
+Rosamond gazed motionless. When the transfiguration of the flower
+was perfected, she sprang to her feet with clasped hands, but for
+very ecstasy of joy stood speechless, gazing at the child.
+
+"Did you never see me before, Rosamond?" she asked.
+
+"No, never," answered the princess. "I never saw any thing half so
+lovely."
+
+"Look at me," said the child.
+
+And as Rosamond looked, the child began, like the flower, to grow
+larger. Quickly through every gradation of growth she passed, until
+she stood before her a woman perfectly beautiful, neither old nor
+young; for hers was the old age of everlasting youth.
+
+Rosamond was utterly enchanted, and stood gazing without word or
+movement until she could endure no more delight. Then her mind
+collapsed to the thought--had the pony grown too? She glanced round.
+There was no pony, no grass, no flowers, no bright-birded
+forest--but the cottage of the wise woman--and before her, on the
+hearth of it, the goddess-child, the only thing unchanged.
+
+She gasped with astonishment.
+
+"You must set out for your father's palace immediately," said the
+lady.
+
+"But where is the wise woman?" asked Rosamond, looking all about.
+
+"Here," said the lady.
+
+And Rosamond, looking again, saw the wise woman, folded as usual in
+her long dark cloak.
+
+"And it was you all the time?" she cried in delight, and kneeled
+before her, burying her face in her garments.
+
+"It always is me, all the time," said the wise woman, smiling.
+
+"But which is the real you?" asked Rosamond; "this or that?"
+
+"Or a thousand others?" returned the wise woman. "But the one you
+have just seen is the likest to the real me that you are able to see
+just yet--but--. And that me you could not have seen a little while
+ago.--But, my darling child," she went on, lifting her up and
+clasping her to her bosom, "you must not think, because you have
+seen me once, that therefore you are capable of seeing me at all
+times. No; there are many things in you yet that must be changed
+before that can be. Now, however, you will seek me. Every time you
+feel you want me, that is a sign I am wanting you. There are yet
+many rooms in my house you may have to go through; but when you need
+no more of them, then you will be able to throw flowers like the
+little girl you saw in the forest."
+
+The princess gave a sigh.
+
+"Do not think," the wise woman went on, "that the things you have
+seen in my house are mere empty shows. You do not know, you cannot
+yet think, how living and true they are.--Now you must go."
+
+She led her once more into the great hall, and there showed her the
+picture of her father's capital, and his palace with the brazen
+gates.
+
+"There is your home," she said. "Go to it."
+
+The princess understood, and a flush of shame rose to her forehead.
+She turned to the wise woman and said:
+
+"Will you forgive ALL my naughtiness, and ALL the trouble I have
+given you?"
+
+"If I had not forgiven you, I would never have taken the trouble to
+punish you. If I had not loved you, do you think I would have
+carried you away in my cloak?"
+
+"How could you love such an ugly, ill-tempered, rude, hateful
+little wretch?"
+
+"I saw, through it all, what you were going to be," said the wise
+woman, kissing her. "But remember you have yet only BEGUN to be what
+I saw."
+
+"I will try to remember," said the princess, holding her cloak, and
+looking up in her face.
+
+"Go, then," said the wise woman.
+
+Rosamond turned away on the instant, ran to the picture, stepped
+over the frame of it, heard a door close gently, gave one glance
+back, saw behind her the loveliest palace-front of alabaster,
+gleaming in the pale-yellow light of an early summer-morning, looked
+again to the eastward, saw the faint outline of her father's city
+against the sky, and ran off to reach it.
+
+It looked much further off now than when it seemed a picture, but
+the sun was not yet up, and she had the whole of a summer day before
+her.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+
+
+
+
+The soldiers sent out by the king, had no great difficulty in
+finding Agnes's father and mother, of whom they demanded if they
+knew any thing of such a young princess as they described. The
+honest pair told them the truth in every point--that, having lost
+their own child and found another, they had taken her home, and
+treated her as their own; that she had indeed called herself a
+princess, but they had not believed her, because she did not look
+like one; that, even if they had, they did not know how they could
+have done differently, seeing they were poor people, who could not
+afford to keep any idle person about the place; that they had done
+their best to teach her good ways, and had not parted with her until
+her bad temper rendered it impossible to put up with her any longer;
+that, as to the king's proclamation, they heard little of the
+world's news on their lonely hill, and it had never reached them;
+that if it had, they did not know how either of them could have gone
+such a distance from home, and left their sheep or their cottage,
+one or the other, uncared for.
+
+"You must learn, then, how both of you can go, and your sheep must
+take care of your cottage," said the lawyer, and commanded the
+soldiers to bind them hand and foot.
+
+Heedless of their entreaties to be spared such an indignity, the
+soldiers obeyed, bore them to a cart, and set out for the king's
+palace, leaving the cottage door open, the fire burning, the pot of
+potatoes boiling upon it, the sheep scattered over the hill, and the
+dogs not knowing what to do.
+
+Hardly were they gone, however, before the wise woman walked up,
+with Prince behind her, peeped into the cottage, locked the door,
+put the key in her pocket, and then walked away up the hill. In a
+few minutes there arose a great battle between Prince and the dog
+which filled his former place--a well-meaning but dull fellow, who
+could fight better than feed. Prince was not long in showing him
+that he was meant for his master, and then, by his efforts, and
+directions to the other dogs, the sheep were soon gathered again,
+and out of danger from foxes and bad dogs. As soon as this was done,
+the wise woman left them in charge of Prince, while she went to the
+next farm to arrange for the folding of the sheep and the feeding of
+the dogs.
+
+When the soldiers reached the palace, they were ordered to carry
+their prisoners at once into the presence of the king and queen, in
+the throne room. Their two thrones stood upon a high dais at one
+end, and on the floor at the foot of the dais, the soldiers laid
+their helpless prisoners. The queen commanded that they should be
+unbound, and ordered them to stand up. They obeyed with the dignity
+of insulted innocence, and their bearing offended their foolish
+majesties.
+
+Meantime the princess, after a long day's journey, arrived at the
+palace, and walked up to the sentry at the gate.
+
+"Stand back," said the sentry.
+
+"I wish to go in, if you please," said the princess gently.
+
+"Ha! ha! ha!" laughed the sentry, for he was one of those dull
+people who form their judgment from a person's clothes, without even
+looking in his eyes; and as the princess happened to be in rags, her
+request was amusing, and the booby thought himself quite clever for
+laughing at her so thoroughly.
+
+"I am the princess," Rosamond said quietly.
+
+"WHAT princess?" bellowed the man.
+
+"The princess Rosamond. Is there another?" she answered and asked.
+
+But the man was so tickled at the wondrous idea of a princess in
+rags, that he scarcely heard what she said for laughing. As soon as
+he recovered a little, he proceeded to chuck the princess under the
+chin, saying--
+
+"You're a pretty girl, my dear, though you ain't no princess."
+
+Rosamond drew back with dignity.
+
+"You have spoken three untruths at once," she said. "I am NOT
+pretty, and I AM a princess, and if I were dear to you, as I ought
+to be, you would not laugh at me because I am badly dressed, but
+stand aside, and let me go to my father and mother."
+
+The tone of her speech, and the rebuke she gave him, made the man
+look at her; and looking at her, he began to tremble inside his
+foolish body, and wonder whether he might not have made a mistake.
+He raised his hand in salute, and said--
+
+"I beg your pardon, miss, but I have express orders to admit no
+child whatever within the palace gates. They tell me his majesty the
+king says he is sick of children."
+
+"He may well be sick of me!" thought the princess; "but it can't
+mean that he does not want me home again.--I don't think you can
+very well call me a child," she said, looking the sentry full in the
+face.
+
+"You ain't very big, miss," answered the soldier, "but so be you say
+you ain't a child, I'll take the risk. The king can only kill me,
+and a man must die once."
+
+He opened the gate, stepped aside, and allowed her to pass. Had she
+lost her temper, as every one but the wise woman would have expected
+of her, he certainly would not have done so.
+
+She ran into the palace, the door of which had been left open by the
+porter when he followed the soldiers and prisoners to the
+throne-room, and bounded up the stairs to look for her father and
+mother. As she passed the door of the throne-room she heard an
+unusual noise in it, and running to the king's private entrance,
+over which hung a heavy curtain, she peeped past the edge of it, and
+saw, to her amazement, the shepherd and shepherdess standing like
+culprits before the king and queen, and the same moment heard the
+king say--
+
+"Peasants, where is the princess Rosamond?"
+
+"Truly, sire, we do not know," answered the shepherd.
+
+"You ought to know," said the king.
+
+"Sire, we could keep her no longer."
+
+"You confess, then," said the king, suppressing the outbreak of the
+wrath that boiled up in him, "that you turned her out of your
+house."
+
+For the king had been informed by a swift messenger of all that had
+passed long before the arrival of the prisoners.
+
+"We did, sire; but not only could we keep her no longer, but we knew
+not that she was the princess."
+
+"You ought to have known, the moment you cast your eyes upon her,"
+said the king. "Any one who does not know a princess the moment he
+sees her, ought to have his eyes put out."
+
+"Indeed he ought," said the queen.
+
+To this they returned no answer, for they had none ready.
+
+"Why did you not bring her at once to the palace," pursued the king,
+"whether you knew her to be a princess or not? My proclamation left
+nothing to your judgment. It said EVERY CHILD."
+
+"We heard nothing of the proclamation, sire."
+
+"You ought to have heard," said the king. "It is enough that I make
+proclamations; it is for you to read them. Are they not written in
+letters of gold upon the brazen gates of this palace?"
+
+"A poor shepherd, your majesty--how often must he leave his flock,
+and go hundreds of miles to look whetner there may not be something
+in letters of gold upon the brazen gates? We did not know that your
+majesty had made a proclamation, or even that the princess was
+lost."
+
+"You ought to have known," said the king.
+
+The shepherd held his peace.
+
+"But," said the queen, taking up the word, "all that is as nothing,
+when I think how you misused the darling."
+
+The only ground the queen had for saying thus, was what Agnes had
+told her as to how the princess was dressed; and her condition
+seemed to the queen so miserable, that she had imagined all sorts of
+oppression and cruelty.
+
+But this was more than the shepherdess, who had not yet spoken,
+could bear.
+
+"She would have been dead, and NOT buried, long ago, madam, if I had
+not carried her home in my two arms."
+
+"Why does she say her TWO arms?" said the king to himself. "Has she
+more than two? Is there treason in that?"
+
+"You dressed her in cast-off clothes," said the queen.
+
+"I dressed her in my own sweet child's Sunday clothes. And this is
+what I get for it!" cried the shepherdess, bursting into tears.
+
+"And what did you do with the clothes you took off her? Sell them?"
+
+"Put them in the fire, madam. They were not fit for the poorest
+child in the mountains. They were so ragged that you could see her
+skin through them in twenty different places."
+
+"You cruel woman, to torture a mother's feelings so!" cried the
+queen, and in her turn burst into tears.
+
+"And I'm sure," sobbed the shepherdess, "I took every pains to teach
+her what it was right for her to know. I taught her to tidy the
+house and"--
+
+"Tidy the house!" moaned the queen. "My poor wretched offspring!"
+
+"And peel the potatoes, and"--
+
+"Peel the potatoes!" cried the queen. "Oh, horror!"
+
+"And black her master's boots," said the shepherdess.
+
+"Black her master's boots!" shrieked the queen. "Oh, my white-handed
+princess! Oh, my ruined baby!"
+
+"What I want to know," said the king, paying no heed to this
+maternal duel, but patting the top of his sceptre as if it had been
+the hilt of a sword which he was about to draw, "is, where the
+princess is now."
+
+The shepherd made no answer, for he had nothing to say more than he
+had said already.
+
+"You have murdered her!" shouted the king. "You shall be tortured
+till you confess the truth; and then you shall be tortured to death,
+for you are the most abominable wretches in the whole wide world."
+
+"Who accuses me of crime?" cried the shepherd, indignant.
+
+"I accuse you," said the king; "but you shall see, face to face, the
+chief witness to your villany. Officer, bring the girl."
+
+Silence filled the hall while they waited. The king's face was
+swollen with anger. The queen hid hers behind her handkerchief. The
+shepherd and shepherdess bent their eyes on the ground, wondering.
+It was with difficulty Rosamond could keep her place, but so wise
+had she already become that she saw it would be far better to let
+every thing come out before she interfered.
+
+At length the door opened, and in came the officer, followed by
+Agnes, looking white as death and mean as sin.
+
+The shepherdess gave a shriek, and darted towards her with arms
+spread wide; the shepherd followed, but not so eagerly.
+
+"My child! my lost darling! my Agnes!" cried the shepherdess.
+
+"Hold them asunder," shouted the king. "Here is more villany! What!
+have I a scullery-maid in my house born of such parents? The parents
+of such a child must be capable of any thing. Take all three of them
+to the rack. Stretch them till their joints are torn asunder, and
+give them no water. Away with them!"
+
+The soldiers approached to lay hands on them. But, behold! a girl
+all in rags, with such a radiant countenance that it was right
+lovely to see, darted between, and careless of the royal presence,
+flung herself upon the shepherdess, crying,--
+
+"Do not touch her. She is my good, kind mistress."
+
+But the shepherdess could hear or see no one but her Agnes, and
+pushed her away. Then the princess turned, with the tears in her
+eyes, to the shepherd, and threw her arms about his neck and pulled
+down his head and kissed him. And the tall shepherd lifted her to
+his bosom and kept her there, but his eyes were fixed on his Agnes.
+
+"What is the meaning of this?" cried the king, starting up from his
+throne. "How did that ragged girl get in here? Take her away with
+the rest. She is one of them, too."
+
+But the princess made the shepherd set her down, and before any one
+could interfere she had run up the steps of the dais and then the
+steps of the king's throne like a squirrel, flung herself upon the
+king, and begun to smother him with kisses.
+
+All stood astonished, except the three peasants, who did not even
+see what took place. The shepherdess kept calling to her Agnes, but
+she was so ashamed that she did not dare even lift her eyes to meet
+her mother's, and the shepherd kept gazing on her in silence. As for
+the king, he was so breathless and aghast with astonishment, that he
+was too feeble to fling the ragged child from him, as he tried to
+do. But she left him, and running down the steps of the one throne
+and up those of the other, began kissing the queen next. But the
+queen cried out,--
+
+"Get away, you great rude child!--Will nobody take her to the rack?"
+
+Then the princess, hardly knowing what she did for joy that she had
+come in time, ran down the steps of the throne and the dais, and
+placing herself between the shepherd and shepherdess, took a hand of
+each, and stood looking at the king and queen.
+
+Their faces began to change. At last they began to know her. But she
+was so altered--so lovelily altered, that it was no wonder they
+should not have known her at the first glance; but it was the fault
+of the pride and anger and injustice with which their hearts were
+filled, that they did not know her at the second.
+
+The king gazed and the queen gazed, both half risen from their
+thrones, and looking as if about to tumble down upon her, if only
+they could be right sure that the ragged girl was their own child. A
+mistake would be such a dreadful thing!
+
+"My darling!" at last shrieked the mother, a little doubtfully.
+
+"My pet of pets?" cried the father, with an interrogative twist of
+tone.
+
+Another moment, and they were half way down the steps of the dais.
+
+"Stop!" said a voice of command from somewhere in the hall, and,
+king and queen as they were, they stopped at once half way, then
+drew themselves up, stared, and began to grow angry again, but durst
+not go farther.
+
+The wise woman was coming slowly up through the crowd that filled
+the hall. Every one made way for her. She came straight on until she
+stood in front of the king and queen.
+
+"Miserable man and woman!" she said, in words they alone could hear,
+"I took your daughter away when she was worthy of such parents; I
+bring her back, and they are unworthy of her. That you did not know
+her when she came to you is a small wonder, for you have been blind
+in soul all your lives: now be blind in body until your better eyes
+are unsealed."
+
+She threw her cloak open. It fell to the ground, and the radiance
+that flashed from her robe of snowy whiteness, from her face of
+awful beauty, and from her eyes that shone like pools of sunlight,
+smote them blind.
+
+Rosamond saw them give a great start, shudder, waver to and fro,
+then sit down on the steps of the dais; and she knew they were
+punished, but knew not how. She rushed up to them, and catching a
+hand of each said--
+
+"Father, dear father! mother dear! I will ask the wise woman to
+forgive you."
+
+"Oh, I am blind! I am blind!" they cried together. "Dark as night!
+Stone blind!"
+
+Rosamond left them, sprang down the steps, and kneeling at her feet,
+cried, "Oh, my lovely wise woman! do let them see. Do open their
+eyes, dear, good, wise woman."
+
+The wise woman bent down to her, and said, so that none else could
+hear, "I will one day. Meanwhile you must be their servant, as I
+have been yours. Bring them to me, and I will make them welcome."
+
+Rosamond rose, went up the steps again to her father and mother,
+where they sat like statues with closed eyes, half-way from the top
+of the dais where stood their empty thrones, seated herself between
+them, took a hand of each, and was still.
+
+All this time very few in the room saw the wise woman. The moment
+she threw off her cloak she vanished from the sight of almost all
+who were present. The woman who swept and dusted the hall and
+brushed the thrones, saw her, and the shepherd had a glimmering
+vision of her; but no one else that I know of caught a glimpse of
+her. The shepherdess did not see her. Nor did Agnes, but she felt
+her presence upon her like the beat of a furnace seven times heated.
+
+As soon as Rosamond had taken her place between her father and
+mother, the wise woman lifted her cloak from the floor, and threw it
+again around her. Then everybody saw her, and Agnes felt as if a
+soft dewy cloud had come between her and the torrid rays of a
+vertical sun. The wise woman turned to the shepherd and shepherdess.
+
+"For you," she said, "you are sufficiently punished by the work of
+your own hands. Instead of making your daughter obey you, you left
+her to be a slave to herself; you coaxed when you ought to have
+compelled; you praised when you ought to have been silent; you
+fondled when you ought to have punished; you threatened when you
+ought to have inflicted--and there she stands, the full-grown result
+of your foolishness! She is your crime and your punishment. Take her
+home with you, and live hour after hour with the pale-hearted
+disgrace you call your daughter. What she is, the worm at her heart
+has begun to teach her. When life is no longer endurable, come to
+me.
+
+"Madam," said the shepherd, "may I not go with you now?"
+
+"You shall," said the wise woman.
+
+"Husband! husband!" cried the shepherdess, "how are we two to get
+home without you?"
+
+"I will see to that," said the wise woman. "But little of home you
+will find it until you have come to me. The king carried you hither,
+and he shall carry you back. But your husband shall not go with you.
+He cannot now if he would."
+
+The shepherdess looked and saw that the shepherd stood in a deep
+sleep. She went to him and sought to rouse him, but neither tongue
+nor hands were of the slightest avail.
+
+The wise woman turned to Rosamond.
+
+"My child," she said, "I shall never be far from you. Come to me
+when you will. Bring them to me."
+
+Rosamond smiled and kissed her hand, but kept her place by her
+parents. They also were now in a deep sleep like the shepherd.
+
+The wise woman took the shepherd by the hand, and led him away.
+
+And that is all my double story. How double it is, if you care to
+know, you must find out. If you think it is not finished--I never
+knew a story that was. I could tell you a great deal more concerning
+them all, but I have already told more than is good for those who
+read but with their foreheads, and enough for those whom it has made
+look a little solemn, and sigh as they close the book.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Double Story, by George MacDonald
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A DOUBLE STORY ***
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