ss only a moment
ago, but golden when his fingers quitted it), and emerged into the
garden. Here, as it happened, he found a great number of beautiful
roses in full bloom, and others in all the stages of lovely bud and
blossom. Very delicious was their fragrance in the morning breeze.
Their delicate blush was one of the fairest sights in the world; so
gentle, so modest, and so full of sweet tranquillity, did these roses
seem to be.

But Midas knew a way to make them far more precious, according to his
way of thinking, than roses had ever been before. So he took great
pains in going from bush to bush, and exercised his magic touch most
indefatigably; until every individual flower and bud, and even the
worms at the heart of some of them, were changed to gold. By the time
this good work was completed, King Midas was summoned to breakfast;
and as the morning air had given him an excellent appetite, he made
haste back to the palace.

What was usually a king's breakfast in the days of Midas, I really do
not know, and cannot stop now to investigate. To the best of my
belief, however, on this particular morning, the breakfast consisted
of hot cakes, some nice little brook trout, roasted potatoes, fresh
boiled eggs, and coffee, for King Midas himself, and a bowl of bread
and milk for his daughter Marygold. At all events, this is a breakfast
fit to set before a king; and, whether he had it or not, King Midas
could not have had a better.

Little Marygold had not yet made her appearance. Her father ordered
her to be called, and, seating himself at table, awaited the child's
coming, in order to begin his own breakfast. To do Midas justice, he
really loved his daughter, and loved her so much the more this
morning, on account of the good fortune which had befallen him. It was
not a great while before he heard her coming along the passageway
crying bitterly. This circumstance surprised him, because Marygold was
one of the cheerfullest little people whom you would see in a summer's
day, and hardly shed a thimbleful of tears in a twelvemonth. When
Midas heard her sobs, he determined to put little Marygold into better
spirits, by an agreeable surprise; so, leaning across the table, he
touched his daughter's bowl (which was a China one, with pretty
figures all around it), and transmuted it to gleaming gold.

Meanwhile, Marygold slowly and disconsolately opened the door, and
showed herself with her apron at her eyes, still sobbing as i