“Well, I do,” said Randy. “If my hair was long, I’d enough rather have it called tresses.”
“I’ll call it tresses,” said obliging little Prue, “even if it isn’t very long. Now, go on, Randy.”
So Randy continued: “‘She unbound her tresses, and they fell down twenty ells, and the witch mounted up by them.’”
“Oh, my, my!” interrupted Prue, “your hair’s longer’n that!”
“Longer than what?” said the astonished Randy.
“Twenty ells,” said Prue. “When you showed me the other day how to print a L, it wasn’t very big. Would twenty of ’em be so very much? Your hair is most down to your waist, when I stretch the ends out so they don’t curl.”
“O you funny child!” said Randy, half laughing, half impatient. “It doesn’t mean that kind of ell. What’s the use of reading the stories? You ask so many questions, I don’t believe you half hear them.”
“Oh, I do truly want to hear the stories, and if you’ll only read, I won’t ask a question, ’less it’s something I can’t make out.”
Again Randy found the place, and for some time the story went on without interruption. Once they paused to see the picture of the lovely girl in the tower, then Randy went on:—
“‘The king’s son wished to ascend to her, and looked for a door in the tower, but he could not find one. So he rode home, but the song which she had sung had touched his heart so much that he went every day to the forest and listened to it. As he thus stood one day behind a tree, he saw the witch come up and heard her call out:—