recall the adoration you
felt when you first beheld the Lady Nancibel in a deep swoon?'

"The Young Knight's eyes took on a far-away look and he put his hand to
his forehead.

"'It comes back to me now!' he sighed. 'I did love the Lady Nancibel
passionately, and I cannot think how it slipped my mind!'

"'I release you willingly!' exclaimed the Crown Princess Kitty
haughtily, 'for a million suitors await my nod, and thou wert never
really mine!'

"'But the other lady rejects me also!' responds the luckless youth, the
tears flowing from his eagle eyes onto his crimson mantle.

"'Wilt delay the nuptials until I am eighteen and the castle is set in
order?' asks the Lady Nancibel relentingly.

"'Since it must be, I do pledge thee my vow to wait,' says the Knight.
'And I do beg the fair one with the golden locks to consider the claims
of my brother, not my equal perhaps, but still a gallant youth.'

"'I will enter him on my waiting list as number Three Hundred and
Seventeen,' responds the Crown Princess Kitty, than whom no violet could
be more shy. ''Tis all he can expect and more than I should promise.'

"So they all lived in the yellow castle in great happiness forever
after, and were buried by the shores of the shining river of
Beulah!--Does that suit you better?"

"Simply lovely!" cried Kitty, "and the bit about my modesty is too funny
for words!--Oh, if some of it would only happen! But I am afraid Gilbert
will not stir up any fairy stories and set them going."

"Some of it will happen!" exclaimed Peter. "I shall dig every single day
till I find the gold-pots."

"You are a pot of gold yourself, filled full and running over!"

"Now, Nancy, run and write down your fairy tale while you remember it!"
said Mother Carey.

"It is as good an exercise as any other, and you still tell a story far
better than you write it!"

Nancy did this sort of improvising every now and then, and had done it
from earliest childhood; and sometimes, of late, Mother Carey looked at
her eldest chicken and wondered if after all she had hatched in her a
bird of brighter plumage or rarer song than the rest, or a young eagle
whose strong wings would bear her to a higher flight!

IX

GILBERT'S EMBASSY

The new station had just been built in Boston, and it seemed a great
enterprise to Gilbert to be threading his way through the enormous
spaces, getting his information by his own wits and not asking questions
like a stupid scho