Oswald Bastable and Others Part 44

'I will have you taught. You shall learn how to do my work. Ask your father to come and see me. And now, good-bye. Perhaps I shan't see you again. Will you always remember that your Christmas-tree came to me like a light in a dark night to show me that there was someone still who cared to be kind.... Good-bye.'

Father, when he heard the story, almost thought that Phyllis was dreaming. But he went to the Grotto, and when he came back his face was very sad.

'It is a very great honour for you, Phyllis,' he said gravely. 'Are you sure that you understand how much hard work it will mean?'

'I don't mind hard work,' said Phyllis, 'if only I can do what he wants.'

So Phyllis is learning many things and preparing for the great work that has so wonderfully come to her. I think she will do it well, because she is not at all stupid really, and she has the gift of being sorry for sad people, and happy with happy ones. I think Sir Christopher chose well.

Some distant relations of Sir Christopher's have tried to make out that he was mad, and so couldn't do what he liked with his money. But when they took the matter to the judges to decide, hundreds and hundreds of people he had been good to and helped broke the promise of secrecy that he had always asked of them. And all England rang with the tale of his goodness, and of all the kind and clever things he had done for poor children all those long years, for the sake of his own little child. And the judges decided he was quite right to use his money in that way, and not mad at all. So the tiresome relations got nothing but lawyers' bills for their pains.

Phyllis only saw Sir Christopher once again. He sent for her when he was dying. They had moved his bed into the pearly room, and he lay facing the green curtain.

'If it seems too hard when the time comes,' he said, 'you need not do the work. Your father knows how to arrange that.'

'You needn't be afraid,' said Phyllis; 'it's the most splendid chance anyone ever had.'

'Kiss me, dear,' he said, 'and then draw back the curtain.'

But before Phyllis's hand had touched the green curtain he sat up in the bed and held out his arms towards the picture.

'Why, ladybird!' he cried, his face all alight with love and joy. 'Why, my little girl!'

MUSCADEL

Of course, there was a grand party when Princess Pandora came of age.

The palace was hung with garlands of white roses, all the carpets were taken up, and the floor of every room was covered close with green turf with daisies in it, for in that country the cruel practice of rooting daisies out of lawns with a spud was a crime.

The Queen-mother had died when Pandora was a little baby, so now the Princess had to be hostess, and to receive all the guests, and speak to each one a little, and see that everyone had enough to eat and the right sort of person to talk to.

She did it all very nicely indeed, for she was a properly brought up Princess and had been to a school for the daughters of monarchs only, where, every Wednesday evening, she and her school-fellows were taught 'deportment, manners, and how to behave at Court.'

All the guests went away very pleased with her and with themselves, which is how people ought always to feel after a party.

When they had all gone she went and curled up at the feet of her father, who had sunk back on his throne exhausted by his hospitable exertions.

The two were quite alone, except for a particularly fine house-fly who had settled on the back of the throne, just above the carved Royal arms.

Of course, neither the King nor the Princess noticed such a little thing as a fly.

'Well, daddy dear,' said the Princess, 'did it go off all right? Did I behave prettily?'

'Ah!' said the King, 'you're a born Princess, my pet. Pretty face, pretty manners, good heart, good head. You're your dear mother over again. And that reminds me----'

'Yes?' said the Princess.

'When your mother died,' said the King--and he sighed, though it was twenty-one years to a day since he had lost his Queen-love--'I promised her to lock up her apartments, and only to give the keys of them to you when you should be twenty-one. And now you _are_, so here are the keys, my precious. You've always wanted to explore the rooms in the south wing. Well, now you can.'

'How lovely!' cried the Princess, jumping up; 'won't you come too, daddy?'

'I'd rather not, dear,' said the King, so sadly that Pandora at once said:

'Well, then, _I_ won't either. I'll stay with you.'

But the King said 'No,' and she had better take a housemaid or two with brooms and dusters. 'The dust grows thick in twenty-one years,' said he.

But the Princess didn't want any of the palace housemaids to help her to explore her mother's rooms. She went alone, holding up her cloth-of-silver train because of the dust.

And the rooms that she unlocked with the six gold keys with pearls in their handles were very dusty indeed. The windows were yellow with dust, so the Princess threw them all open. And then, even through the dust, she could see how beautiful the rooms were--far more beautiful even than her own--and everyone had always said that hers were the most beautiful rooms in the seven kingdoms. She dusted the tops of a few of the tables and cabinets with her lace handkerchief, so that she could just see how everything was inlaid with ivory and jade and ebony and precious stones.

Six of the keys--the pearly ones--opened six beautiful rooms, but the seventh had rubies in its handle, and it was a little, little key, not at all like a door-key; so Pandora looked about for a little keyhole that the key would fit, and at last she found a cabinet of ebony inlaid with gold and red tortoisesh.e.l.l, and the little seventh key just fitted through the opening of the gold lock-plate and into the keyhole. Pandora turned the key and opened the cabinet. Inside the cabinet were seven little drawers with gold handles set with rubies, like the key.

Pandora pulled the drawers out one after the other. She was alone, except for the house-fly, who had followed her and now sat on the top of the cabinet door, watching her with all his hundreds of eyes. But no one notices a fly.

Five of the drawers contained jewels. The first was full of necklaces, the second held rings and brooches, the third had tiaras and chaplets, the fourth girdles, and the fifth bracelets, and they were all of the most beautiful jewels in the world--rubies, sapphires, emeralds, pearls and diamonds, and opals, and many other stones that the Princess did not even know the names of.

In the sixth drawer was a dry brown wreath that fell to pieces as Pandora lifted it. It had been jasmine once, and the Queen had worn it at her wedding.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 'In the drawer was just one jewelled ring. It lay on a written page.'--Page 347.]

And in the seventh drawer was just one jewelled ring. It lay on a written page.

The Princess read the writing:

'This ring is for my son's wife, or for my daughter, if I have no son.

It is the magic ring given thousands of years ago to a Queen of this country. It has the power of changing the wearer into whatever shapes he chooses. But it has never been used, because the Kings of this country have always been so good and kind, and clever and beloved, that their wives could never think of any change that would not be a change for the worse. There is only one thing in the world that this jewel cannot touch or change. And this is of all things in the world the most important thing.'

Pandora kissed the written words and slipped the ring on to her finger.

It was a wonderful stone, like a sapphire that had tried to change into an opal, and stopped halfway.

There was not a happier Princess living than Pandora. Yet she was not afraid of change. Girls are like this sometimes, and she was very young for her age.

She stood looking at the ring and turning it on her finger, and the fly watched her with all its hundreds of eyes.

Now, you will, perhaps, have guessed that this fly was not an ordinary fly, and you are right. But if you think he was an enchanted Prince or anything of that sort you are wrong. The fly was simply the cleverest fly of all flies--someone must be the cleverest in any society, you know--and he was just clever enough to like to be where the Princess was, and to look at her beauty with all his hundreds of eyes. He was clever enough to like this and to know that he liked it, but he was not clever enough to know why.

So now, as the Princess stood fingering her ring and trying to make her mind up, he gave an interested buzz, and the Princess jumped.

'Oh,' she said, 'it's only a horrid fly! But it has wings. It must be lovely to have wings. I wish I were a fairy no bigger than that fly.'

And instantly she and her silver-trained gown, and her silver shoes, and the magic ring, and everything about her, grew suddenly small, till she was just as big as the fly and no bigger, and that is flower-fairy size.

Silver gauze wings grew out of her shoulders; she felt them unfolding slowly, like a dragon-fly's wings when he first comes out of that dull brown coat of his that hasn't any wing-parts.

She gave a tiny shriek of joyous surprise, and fluttered out through the open window and down across the marble terraces to the palace flowergarden. The fly buzzed heavily after her.

Pandora fluttered among roses and lilies on her bright, light, white wings, but presently she was tired, because flying is much harder work than you would think, especially when you have not been brought up to it from a child. So she looked about for a place to rest in, and saw near her the cool pink cave of a foxglove flower. She alighted on its lip, folded her wings, and walked in on her little fairy feet. It was very pleasant inside the foxglove. The Princess sat down by a drop of dew, which was quite a pool to the tiny lady, and presently she took off her rings and laid them on the smooth floor of the pink cave, and began to dabble her hands in the dew-pool. The fly had settled on the outer edge of the flower, and watched her with all his hundreds of eyes.