is how people ought always to feel after a party.

When they had all gone she went and curled up at the feet of her father,
who had sunk back on his throne exhausted by his hospitable exertions.
The two were quite alone, except for a particularly fine house-fly who
had settled on the back of the throne, just above the carved Royal arms.
Of course, neither the King nor the Princess noticed such a little thing
as a fly.

'Well, daddy dear,' said the Princess, 'did it go off all right? Did I
behave prettily?'

'Ah!' said the King, 'you're a born Princess, my pet. Pretty face,
pretty manners, good heart, good head. You're your dear mother over
again. And that reminds me----'

'Yes?' said the Princess.

'When your mother died,' said the King--and he sighed, though it was
twenty-one years to a day since he had lost his Queen-love--'I promised
her to lock up her apartments, and only to give the keys of them to you
when you should be twenty-one. And now you _are_, so here are the keys,
my precious. You've always wanted to explore the rooms in the south
wing. Well, now you can.'

'How lovely!' cried the Princess, jumping up; 'won't you come too,
daddy?'

'I'd rather not, dear,' said the King, so sadly that Pandora at once
said:

'Well, then, _I_ won't either. I'll stay with you.'

But the King said 'No,' and she had better take a housemaid or two with
brooms and dusters. 'The dust grows thick in twenty-one years,' said
he.

But the Princess didn't want any of the palace housemaids to help her to
explore her mother's rooms. She went alone, holding up her
cloth-of-silver train because of the dust.

And the rooms that she unlocked with the six gold keys with pearls in
their handles were very dusty indeed. The windows were yellow with dust,
so the Princess threw them all open. And then, even through the dust,
she could see how beautiful the rooms were--far more beautiful even than
her own--and everyone had always said that hers were the most beautiful
rooms in the seven kingdoms. She dusted the tops of a few of the tables
and cabinets with her lace handkerchief, so that she could just see how
everything was inlaid with ivory and jade and ebony and precious stones.

Six of the keys--the pearly ones--opened six beautiful rooms, but the
seventh had rubies in its handle, and it was a little, little key, not
at all like a door-key; so Pandora looked about for a little keyhole
that the key would fit, and at last she found