XI
That was how they began to live day after day on the Holy Lake. Primrose was quite happy and desired nothing better.
There was clear water in the Lake, and there were sweet raspberries. There were plenty of flowers and butterflies in the meadow, and fireflies and dew by night. Nightingales and doves nested in the trees.
Every evening Lavender would make Primrose a bed of leaves, and in the morning she bathed him in the Lake and tied up his little shoes. And Primrose thought: “What do we want with a wider world than this within the furrow?”
Primrose was well off; he was only a baby!
And Lavender was happy, but she was troubled about Primrose, how she should look after him and get him food. Because God has so ordered it that the young folk can never get food without the old folk having to think about it.
That is so all the world over, and couldn’t be otherwise even on the Holy Lake.
So Lavender was worried. “To-morrow will be St. Peter’s Day. Will the raspberries be over when St. Peter’s is past? Will the water grow cold and the sun fail when autumn comes? How shall we get through the winter all alone? Will our cottage in the valley go to rack and ruin?”
So Lavender worried, and wherever there is worry, there temptation comes most easily.
One day she sat and mused: “Oh dear! what luck it would be if only we could get back to our cottage!” Just then she heard somebody calling from the Mountain. Lavender looked, and there in the wood on the far side of the furrow stood the youngest of the Votaresses.
She was prettier than the other Votaresses, and loved finery. She had noticed the Golden Girdle on Lavender, and now she wanted that Golden Girdle above anything else in the world.
“Little girl, sister, throw me your Girdle,” called the fairy across the furrow.
“I can’t do that, Fairy; I had that Girdle from my mother,” answered Lavender.
“Little girl, sister, it wasn’t your mother’s Girdle; it belonged to the princess, and the princess has been dead long ago. Throw me the Girdle,” said the Fairy, who remembered the princess.
“I can’t, Fairy; the Girdle is from my mother,” repeated Lavender.
“Little girl, sister, I will carry you and your brother down to the valley, and no harm shall come to you; throw me the Girdle,” cried the Fairy once more.
This was a sad temptation for Lavender, who so longed to get away from the Mountain! But all the same she would not sacrifice her mother’s keepsake to the greedy fairy, but answered:
“I cannot, Fairy; I had the Girdle from my mother.”
The Fairy went away quite sadly, but next day she came back and began again:
“Throw me the Girdle, and I will take you down the Mountain.”
“I cannot, Fairy; I had the Girdle from my mother,” Lavender answered once more, but with a very heavy heart.
For seven days did the Fairy come, and for seven days she tempted Lavender. Temptation is worse than the sharpest care, and poor little Lavender pined away, so great was her wish to get down to the valley. Yet all the same she would not give up the Girdle.
For seven days did the Fairy call, and for seven days did Lavender answer her:
“I cannot, Fairy; the Girdle is from my mother.”
And when she answered thus on the seventh day, the Fairy saw that there was no help for it.
The Fairy went down the Mountain; she sat down on the last, lowest stone, shook down her hair and cried bitterly, so great was her desire for the Golden Girdle of the princess.