generally
tried to be,--and when his mind went wandering after the dark, dusty
corner where lay his precious treasure, he resolutely called it back
again.

"For," he said, "how ashamed my godmother would be of me if I grew up a
stupid boy!"

But the instant lessons were done, and he was alone in the empty room,
he crept across the floor, undid the shabby little bundle, his fingers
trembling with eagerness, climbed on the chair, and thence to the table,
so as to unbar the skylight,--he forgot nothing now,--said his magic
charm, and was away out of the window, as children say, "in a few
minutes less than no time."

Nobody missed him. He was accustomed to sit so quietly always that
his nurse, though only in the next room, perceived no difference. And
besides, she might have gone in and out a dozen times, and it would have
been just the same; she never could have found out his absence.

For what do you think the clever godmother did? She took a quantity of
moonshine, or some equally convenient material, and made an image, which
she set on the window-sill reading, or by the table drawing, where it
looked so like Prince Dolor that any common observer would never have
guessed the deception; and even the boy would have been puzzled to know
which was the image and which was himself.

And all this while the happy little fellow was away, floating in the air
on his magic cloak, and seeing all sorts of wonderful things--or they
seemed wonderful to him, who had hitherto seen nothing at all.

First, there were the flowers that grew on the plain, which, whenever
the cloak came near enough, he strained his eyes to look at; they were
very tiny, but very beautiful--white saxifrage, and yellow lotus, and
ground-thistles, purple and bright, with many others the names of which
I do not know. No more did Prince Dolor, though he tried to find them
out by recalling any pictures he had seen of them. But he was too far
off; and though it was pleasant enough to admire them as brilliant
patches of color, still he would have liked to examine them all. He was,
as a little girl I know once said of a playfellow, "a very examining
boy."

"I wonder," he thought, "whether I could see better through a pair of
glasses like those my nurse reads with, and takes such care of. How I
would take care of them, too, if I only had a pair!"

Immediately he felt something queer and hard fixing itself to the bridge
of his nose. It was a pair of the prettiest