th a start, as he looked about him
on all sides.

"No?" said the cat. "That's because you can't see through me."

"How very strangely you talk, cat!" exclaimed Vance. "I don't know what
you mean."

"Well," returned the cat, "you know those funny bonbons?"

"Yes," murmured the Prince, hanging his head a bit and blushing.

"One rolled under the sofa," the cat observed thoughtfully.

"Yes," said Vance, "I remember that one was dropped and I couldn't find
it."

"After the telegram reached me from the Crushed Strawberry Wizard,"
remarked the cat, "I rolled the bonbon out into the middle of the
floor. It was a pretty pink bonbon, and the King, coming into the room,
saw it and gobbled it up."

"Well," exclaimed the Prince, breathlessly, "what then?"

The cat put out her tongue and licked her chops.

"He was very tender," she said.

"You ate him?" he asked breathlessly.

The cat placidly nodded her head, her whiskers twitching with the
remembrance of her feast.

"Then," cried Prince Vance, joyously, "my father is King again, or will
be when he is made big enough. You say you had a telegram from the
Crushed Strawberry Wizard. Tell me, do tell me, dear cat, what it said."

"I can't till midnight," said the cat, "or all will be spoiled, and the
charm won't work."

XIX

Before he left home the Prince would have stamped about and made a great
uproar at being obliged to wait even a minute for anything he wanted;
but of late he had learned, among other lessons, the lesson of patience;
so he neither stormed nor cried, but entering the palace seated himself
where he could see the great hall-clock and watch for midnight.

He was so weary, however, that he could not keep his eyes open, and
presently he was as sound asleep as a dormouse. At length the cat
touched him on the shoulder, her claws pricking him so that he sprang up
in a hurry.

"Wake up!" said the cat; "the clock will strike twelve in seven
minutes."

"Why, have I been asleep?" asked the Prince, rubbing his eyes.

"It looks like it," replied the cat. "Why did you leave the Court shut
up in the box?"

"To tell the truth," the Prince confessed, "I was afraid they might be
running about the floor in the dark and--something might eat them by
mistake."

"Well," the cat answered, with a look as near a blush as a cat can come
to such a thing, "you may be right. One never can tell what may happen.
It is now almost on the stroke of twelve, and we mu