hoose to accept them,
you may as well return to Clairdelune at once, for I shall take care
that you never see her again."

"Oh, I accept," he said. "I can't help myself. Only, it does seem to me,
Godmother, that if you're really anxious that I should succeed, you
might make it easier for me than this!"

"No doubt," she said. "But if it was easy there would be no merit in
success. I am putting _her_ to the test, remember, as well as you, and
until I see how you both come through it, I cannot be certain that you
are really fitted for one another."

She had, as a matter of fact, quite made up her mind that they should
marry, but she could not resist such an opening for one of the practical
moral lessons which, as a Fairy Godmother of the fine old didactic type,
she had often brought to an effectively instructive _denoument_.

But if she was enjoying herself over the probation, it is more than can
be said for the unhappy Mirliflor. It is true that, owing to the Court
Godmother's protection, he was treated by the Head Gardener with some
indulgence, but, nevertheless, he had to work much harder and longer
than he liked. Sometimes, however, he was sent to the outlying part of
the gardens, where he was under no supervision, and then it was easy to
slip away to the postern gate, which his key enabled him to enter, and
he was not long in discovering the pavilion which sheltered his
divinity. He wore a big apron and carried a pair of garden shears with
which he lopped and trimmed a shrub now and then by way of accounting
for his intrusion, and sometimes he was rewarded by a glimpse of her.
But that was all, for, with a diffidence he had never known before, he
did not venture near enough to speak. The fact was that he was morbidly
self-conscious about his altered appearance. If the Fairy had only let
him retain his own form, he thought, he would not have hesitated a
moment, but her disdain was more than he could bring himself to face,
and so he watched from afar, and when she wandered out would follow at a
distance, keeping her in view, while remaining unseen himself. It was,
as he felt, not precisely the way to conduct a courtship, and he
despised himself for his want of courage. But he always hoped that
something might happen to bring them together, though it seemed less and
less likely that anything would.

Daphne, meanwhile, was growing resigned to her exclusion from the
Palace, which she chiefly regretted because she coul