ew that
the baby had come from the yolk of an egg. The boy was called Willem.

After the feast was over and the guests were going away, the godmother
laid the baby in the cradle, and said to the queen, 'Whenever the baby
goes to sleep, be sure you lay the basket beside her, and leave the
eggshells in it. As long as you do that, no evil can come to her; so
guard this treasure as the apple of your eye, and teach your daughter
to do so likewise.' Then, kissing the baby three times, she mounted her
coach and drove away.

The children throve well, and Dotterine's nurse loved her as if she
were the baby's real mother. Every day the little girl seemed to grow
prettier, and people used to say she would soon be as beautiful as her
godmother, but no one knew, except the nurse, that at night, when the
child slept, a strange and lovely lady bent over her. At length she told
the queen what she had seen, but they determined to keep it as a secret
between themselves.

The twins were by this time nearly two years old, when the queen was
taken suddenly ill. All the best doctors in the country were sent for,
but it was no use, for there is no cure for death. The queen knew she
was dying, and sent for Dotterine and her nurse, who had now become
her lady-in-waiting. To her, as her most faithful servant, she gave the
lucky basket in charge, and besought her to treasure it carefully. 'When
my daughter,' said the queen, 'is ten years old, you are to hand it over
to her, but warn her solemnly that her whole future happiness depends on
the way she guards it. About my son, I have no fears. He is the heir of
the kingdom, and his father will look after him.' The lady-in-waiting
promised to carry out the queen's directions, and above all to keep the
affair a secret. And that same morning the queen died.

After some years the king married again, but he did not love his second
wife as he had done his first, and had only married her for reasons of
ambition. She hated her step-children, and the king, seeing this, kept
them out of the way, under the care of Dotterine's old nurse. But if
they ever strayed across the path of the queen, she would kick them out
of her sight like dogs.

On Dotterine's tenth birthday her nurse handed her over the cradle, and
repeated to her her mother's dying words; but the child was too young to
understand the value of such a gift, and at first thought little about
it.

Two more years slipped by, when one day during t