.' And
Fantosina felt deeply disappointed to think she was going to be left
behind after all. But the next moment the prince held the cage above his
head and opened the door. The instant the door was opened Fantosina flew
out of the cage, but Abdullah, thinking she had escaped by an accident
and that the prince would be disappointed to lose the bird, ran after
her, followed by the prince, who vainly called to him to come back. The
king followed his guest, from politeness, but at a slower pace, and even
the queen and the courtiers walked in the same direction.

Fantosina felt almost too much excited to fly; after her confinement in
the cage, her wings were a little stiff too, so that long before she
reached the cowslip bank, she feared she might fall exhausted to the
ground and be caught again. Then she wondered whether she find all the
cowslips dead, and this idea alarmed her so much that she flew slower
and slower, though she tried to fly faster and faster. Abdullah was
close to her tail, the prince a little behind him, the king was in the
next field, and the queen and the courtiers in the next but one.

As Fantosina drew near to the bank, she could not see one cowslip; at
last she was exactly over the bank, and just as she felt she could not
fly another yard, she saw a single cowslip under her claws. In an
instant she dropped to the ground, and at the same moment Abdullah
seized her tail. But Fantosina put forth her beak as far as it would go
and just succeeded in touching the pale yellow petal of the one cowslip
which was left.

To the astonishment of Abdullah and of the prince, the blue bird with
the scarlet wings disappeared and in its place stood the most beautiful
princess the prince had ever seen.

'Fantosina!' exclaimed Abdullah.

'Fantosina!' cried the king, almost out of breath.

'Fantosina!' cried the queen in the next field. But the prince said
nothing until Fantosina held out her hand to him.

'If you had not been so good to me,' she said, 'I should have lived in a
cage all my life.'

'I had no idea I was serving the Princess Fantosina,' he answered with a
smile.

'No,' she said, 'but a kind action is never quite wasted,' and then the
queen came up with her hand on her heart, for she had begun to run as
soon as she saw her daughter, and she took Fantosina in her arms, and
they all seemed very pleased to see her again, and presently they walked
back to the palace. The prince's horses were sent to