tastes, but when you have an aunt with the newly acquired gift
of turning anything she touches to gold, you must let her practise
sometimes. In another age it might have been fretwork.

"Ah," said the King, "here you are, my dear." He searched for his
napkin, but the Princess had already kissed him lightly on the top of
the head, and was sitting in her place opposite to him.

"Good morning, Father," she said; "I'm a little late, aren't I? I've
been riding in the forest."

"Any adventures?" asked the King casually.

"Nothing, except it's a beautiful morning."

"Ah, well, perhaps the country isn't what it was. Now when I was a
young man, you simply couldn't go into the forest without an adventure
of some sort. The extraordinary things one encountered! Witches,
giants, dwarfs----. It was there that I first met your mother," he
added thoughtfully.

"I wish I remembered my mother," said Hyacinth.

The King coughed and looked at her a little nervously.

"Seventeen years ago she died, Hyacinth, when you were only six months
old. I have been wondering lately whether I haven't been a little
remiss in leaving you motherless so long."

The Princess looked puzzled. "But it wasn't your fault, dear, that
mother died."

"Oh, no, no, I'm not saying that. As you know, a dragon carried her
off and--well, there it was. But supposing"--he looked at her
shyly--"I had married again."

The Princess was startled.

"Who?" she asked.

The King peered into his flagon. "Well," he said, "there _are_
people."

"If it had been somebody _very_ nice," said the Princess wistfully,
"it might have been rather lovely."

The King gazed earnestly at the outside of his flagon.

"Why 'might have been?'" he said.

The Princess was still puzzled. "But I'm grown up," she said; "I
don't want a mother so much now."

The King turned his flagon round and studied the other side of it.

"A mother's--er--tender hand," he said, "is--er--never----" and then
the outrageous thing happened.

It was all because of a birthday present to the King of Barodia, and
the present was nothing less than a pair of seven-league boots. The
King being a busy man, it was a week or more before he had an
opportunity of trying those boots. Meanwhile he used to talk about
them at meals, and he would polish them up every night before he went
to bed. When the great day came for the first trial of them to be
made, he took a patronising farewell of his wife