ark or a clock in his palace."

The aunt suppressed a gasp of admiration.

"Was the Prince killed by a sheep or by a clock?" asked Cyril.

"He is still alive, so we can't tell whether the dream will come true,"
said the bachelor unconcernedly; "anyway, there were no sheep in the
park, but there were lots of little pigs running all over the place."

"What colour were they?"

"Black with white faces, white with black spots, black all over, grey
with white patches, and some were white all over."

The story-teller paused to let a full idea of the park's treasures sink
into the children's imaginations; then he resumed:

"Bertha was rather sorry to find that there were no flowers in the park.
She had promised her aunts, with tears in her eyes, that she would not
pick any of the kind Prince's flowers, and she had meant to keep her
promise, so of course it made her feel silly to find that there were no
flowers to pick."

"Why weren't there any flowers?"

"Because the pigs had eaten them all," said the bachelor promptly. "The
gardeners had told the Prince that you couldn't have pigs and flowers, so
he decided to have pigs and no flowers."

There was a murmur of approval at the excellence of the Prince's
decision; so many people would have decided the other way.

"There were lots of other delightful things in the park. There were
ponds with gold and blue and green fish in them, and trees with beautiful
parrots that said clever things at a moment's notice, and humming birds
that hummed all the popular tunes of the day. Bertha walked up and down
and enjoyed herself immensely, and thought to herself: 'If I were not so
extraordinarily good I should not have been allowed to come into this
beautiful park and enjoy all that there is to be seen in it,' and her
three medals clinked against one another as she walked and helped to
remind her how very good she really was. Just then an enormous wolf came
prowling into the park to see if it could catch a fat little pig for its
supper."

"What colour was it?" asked the children, amid an immediate quickening of
interest.

"Mud-colour all over, with a black tongue and pale grey eyes that gleamed
with unspeakable ferocity. The first thing that it saw in the park was
Bertha; her pinafore was so spotlessly white and clean that it could be
seen from a great distance. Bertha saw the wolf and saw that it was
stealing towards her, and she began to wish that she had never been
allow