remained except the claws, which all cats have still, as you can easily
ascertain.

And I hope you see now how important it is to feed your cat with bread
and milk. If you were to let it have nothing to eat but mice and birds
it might grow larger and fiercer, and scalier and tailier, and get wings
and turn into the beginning of dragons. And then there would be all the
bother over again.

[Illustration: "He brought something in his mouth--it was a bag of
gold." _See page 116._]

[Illustration: VII

THE FIERY DRAGON]

VII. The Fiery Dragon,

or The Heart of Stone and the Heart of Gold

The little white Princess always woke in her little white bed when the
starlings began to chatter in the pearl gray morning. As soon as the
woods were awake, she used to run up the twisting turret-stairs with her
little bare feet, and stand on the top of the tower in her white
bed-gown, and kiss her hands to the sun and to the woods and to the
sleeping town, and say: "Good morning, pretty world!"

Then she would run down the cold stone steps and dress herself in her
short skirt and her cap and apron, and begin the day's work. She swept
the rooms and made the breakfast, she washed the dishes and she scoured
the pans, and all this she did because she was a real Princess. For of
all who should have served her, only one remained faithful--her old
nurse, who had lived with her in the tower all the Princess's life. And,
now the nurse was old and feeble, the Princess would not let her work
any more, but did all the housework herself, while Nurse sat still and
did the sewing, because this was a real Princess with skin like milk and
hair like flax and a heart like gold.

Her name was Sabrinetta, and her grandmother was Sabra, who married St.
George after he had killed the dragon, and by real rights all the
country belonged to her: the woods that stretched away to the mountains,
the downs that sloped down to the sea, the pretty fields of corn and
maize and rye, the olive orchards and the vineyards, and the little town
itself--with its towers and its turrets, its steep roofs and strange
windows--that nestled in the hollow between the sea, where the whirlpool
was, and the mountains, white with snow and rosy with sunrise.

But when her father and mother had died, leaving her cousin to take care
of the kingdom till she grew up, he, being a very evil Prince, took
everything away from her, and all the people followed him, and now