quiet, as you shall hear presently. And now she heard light footsteps and a sound of weeping, and lo! a great troop of pretty girls passed, sweeping in and out of the halls in a kind of procession, and looking unhappy and lost.
Jaqueline ran to them.
“Where am I? who are you?” she cried, in the language of her own country, which came back to her on a sudden.
“We are nurses of the Earthquaker,” they said. “Our duty is to sing him asleep, and every year he must have a new song; and every year a new maiden must be sent down from earth, with a new sleepy song she has learned from the priests of Manoa, the City of the Sun. Are you the new singer?”
“No, I’m not,” said Jaqueline. “I don’t know the priests of Manoa; I don’t know any new sleepy song. I only want to find the way out.”
“There is no way, or we should have found it,” said one of the maidens; “and, if you are the wrong girl, by the day after to-morrow they must send the right one, otherwise the Earthquaker will waken, and shake the world, and destroy Manoa, the City of the Sun.” Then they all wept softly in the stillness. “Can we get anything to eat here?” asked poor Jaqueline, at last.
She was beginning to be very hungry, and however alarmed she might be, she felt that dinner would not be unwelcome. The tallest of the maidens clapped her hands, and immediately a long table was spread by unseen sprites with meringues and cold chicken, and several sorts of delicious ices.
We shall desert Jaqueline, who was rather less alarmed when she found that she was not to be starved, at all events, and return to Prince Ricardo, whom we left fluttering about
as a little golden-crested wren. He followed the Giant and Jaqueline into the whirlpool of air as far as he dared, and when he saw her vanish down the cone of the hill, he flew straight back to Pantouflia.