she would sit still and sorrowful,
shrivelled up into the form of a frog, though the head was now much
larger than that little animal's, and therefore she was uglier than
ever: she looked like a miserable dwarf, with a frog's head and webbed
fingers. There was something very sad in her eyes; voice she had none
except a kind of croak like a child sobbing in its dreams. Then would
the Viking's wife take her in her lap; she would forget the ugly form,
and look only at the melancholy eyes; and more than once she
exclaimed,--

"I could almost wish that thou wert always my dumb fairy-child, for
thou art more fearful to look at when thy form resumes its beauty."

And she wrote Runic rhymes against enchantment and infirmity, and
threw them over the poor creature; but there was no change for the
better.

* * * * *

"One could hardly believe that she was once so small as to lie in the
calyx of a water-lily," said the stork-father. "She is now quite a
woman, and the image of her Egyptian mother. Her, alas! we have never
seen again. She did not take good care of herself, as thou didst
expect and the learned people predicted. Year after year I have flown
backwards and forwards over 'the wild morass,' but never have I seen a
sign of her. Yes, I can assure thee, during the years we have been
coming up here, when I have arrived some days before thee, that I
might mend the nest and set everything in order in it, I have for a
whole night flown, as if I had been an owl or a bat, continually over
the open water, but to no purpose. We have had no use either for the
two swan disguises which I and the young ones dragged all the way up
here from the banks of the Nile. It was hard enough work, and it took
us three journeys to bring them up. They have now lain here for years
at the bottom of our nest; and should a fire by any chance break out,
and the Viking's house be burned down, they would be lost."

"And our good nest would be lost," said the old female stork; "but
thou thinkest less of that than of these feather things and thy bog
princess. Thou hadst better go down to her at once, and remain in the
mire. Thou art a hard-hearted father to thine own: _that_ I have said
since I laid my first eggs. What if I or one of our young ones should
get an arrow under our wings from that fierce crazy brat at the
Viking's? She does not care what she does. This has been much longer
our home than hers, she ought to rec