you as he
always declared. He was in the habit of saying many pleasant things
about it, your lordship, for he is very amusing. And it is a fact that
you are much mourned in Clarides. You were such a promising child. I
shall remember to my dying day how you once asked me for a needle to
sew with, and as I refused, for you were not of an age to use it without
danger, you replied you would go to the woods and pick beautiful green
pine needles. That is what you said, and it still makes me laugh.
Upon my soul you said that. Our little Peter, also, used to say clever
things. Now he is a cooper and at your service, your lordship."

"I shall employ no one else. But give me news of Honey-Bee and the
Duchess, Master Jean."

"Alack, where do you come from, your lordship, seeing that you do not
know that it is now seven years since the Princess Honey-Bee was stolen
by the dwarfs of the mountain? She disappeared the very day you were
drowned; and one can truly say that on that day Clarides lost its
sweetest flowers. The Duchess is in deep mourning. And it's that which
makes me say that the great of the earth have their sorrows just as well
as the humblest artisans, if only to prove that we are all the sons of
Adam. And because of this a cat may well look at a king, as the saying
is. And by the same token the good Duchess has seen her hair grow white
and her gaiety vanish. And when in the springtime she walks in her black
robes along the hedgerow where the birds sing, the smallest of these is
more to be envied than the sovereign lady of Clarides. And yet her grief
is not quite without hope, your lordship; for though she had no tidings
of you, she at least knows by dreams that her daughter Honey-Bee is
alive."

This and much else said good man Jean, but George listened no longer
after he heard that Honey-Bee was a captive among the dwarfs.

"The dwarfs hold Honey-Bee captive under the earth," he pondered; "a
dwarf rescued me from my crystal dungeon; these little men have not all
the same customs; my deliverer cannot be of the same race as those who
stole my sister."

He knew not what to think except that he must rescue Honey-Bee.

In the meantime they crossed the town, and on their way the gossips
standing on the thresholds of their houses asked each other who was
this young stranger, but they all agreed that he was very handsome.
The better informed amongst them, having recognised the young lord of
Blanchelande, decided that i