d Bob.'"

Mrs. Brownwell paused, and Jeanette said, "Yes, mother told me to ask
you to, Aunt Molly." Tears came into the daughter's eyes, and she
added, "I think she knew even then that--"

And then it all came back, and after a while the elder woman was
saying, "Well, once upon a time there lived a princess, my dear. All
good stories begin so--don't they? She was a fat, pudgy little
princess who longed to grow up and have hoop-skirts like a real
sure-enough woman princess, and there came along a tall prince--the
tallest, handsomest prince in all the wide world, I think. And he and
the princess fell in love, as princesses and princes will, you know,
my dear,--just as they do now, I am told. And the prince had to go
away on business and be gone a long, long time, and while he was gone
the father of the princess and the friend of the prince got into
trouble--and the princess thought it was serious trouble. She thought
the father of the prince would have to go to jail and maybe the prince
and his friend fail. My, my, Jeanette, what a big word that word fail
seemed to the little fat princess! So she let a man make love to her
who could lend them all some money and keep the father out of jail and
the prince and his friend from the awful fate of failure. So the man
lent the money and made love, and made love. And the little princess
had to listen; every one seemed to like to have her listen, so she
listened and she listened, and she was a weak little princess. She
knew she had wronged the prince by letting the man make love to her,
and her soul was smudged and--oh, Jeanette, she was such a foolish,
weak, miserable little princess, and they didn't tell her that there
is only one prince for every princess, and one princess for every
prince--so she took the man, and sent away the prince, and the man
made love ever so beautifully--but it was not the real thing, my
dear,--not the real thing. And afterwards when she saw the
prince--so young and so strong and so handsome, her heart burned for
him as with a flame, and she was not ashamed; the wicked, wicked
princess, she didn't know. And so they walked together one night right
up to the brink of the bad place, dearie--right up to the brink; and
the princess shuddered back, and saved the prince. Oh, Jeanette,
Jeanette, Jeanette," sobbed the woman, in the girl's arms, "right in
this room, in this very room, which was your mother's room in the old
house, I came out of the night, as ba