places. And then he
escapes. I sometimes think that is the most wonderful part of it."

"Do you think a little girl who studied hard could learn your profession
and practice in Bagdad?" asked Miss Muffet timidly. "You know I wouldn't
ask for wages; I would do it just for the love of it."

Hindbad frowned darkly. "It would never do, Miss Muffet! I can't have
little girls coming over on the banks of the Tigris and taking the bread
out of the mouths of my family."

But when he saw that Miss Muffet was beginning to cry, he changed his
tone and said, "I am sure you meant no harm, only you didn't understand
about the wages. You could easily earn a hundred sequins at listening,
and it isn't so hard to learn when you are young. I would give that much
myself to have you listen to a queer thing that happened to me once in
Bagdad. I've never told it before, for I never found any one who looked
interested. It was in one of the narrowest streets down by the
water-side, and it was on the darkest night of the year, when"--

Just then the spider came to take Miss Muffet away to meet some children
who came from The Golden Age. Their names were Harold and Edward and
Charlotte, and they said they had an Aunt Maria, who had stayed at home
because she had not been invited to the party. They had walked all the
way along the Roman Road, which made the spider think that they must be
tired. In this he was mistaken; though they said that they were ready
for the refreshments.

[Illustration: Chapter V]

The Golden Age children said that they didn't like to play with grown
folks; after people got to be thirty or ninety they thought they became
very uninteresting, and didn't have the right kind of feelings; unless
they were Princes and went on adventures.

Miss Muffet didn't agree with this because some of her best friends were
elderly peasants whose faces were all puckered up because they had been
smiling for so many years. She wished, though, that they were not so
shy.

[Illustration: _The shyest persons in the room_]

"I suppose it's because they are not used to going to parties; neither
am I, for that matter, but then I'm not so much used as they are to
_not_ going."

Perhaps the shyest persons in the room were an old German shoemaker and
his wife, whom Miss Muffet had for a long time loved and admired, though
they had not known it. Indeed, they didn't know that any one was ever
admired unless he had found a pot of gold or d