Alice sat down on the grassy bank, and Lolly laid her head upon her friend’s lap, while Maddie crowded close to her to listen.
“I don’t know that I can remember it very well,” said Alice; “but I’ll tell it as nearly as I can like Miss Mason. She called it ‘The Little Exiled Princess,’ and this is it.”
CHAPTER III.
Once upon a time there was a little girl no bigger than Lolly here, sitting in the dirt by the roadside, crying.
Her frock was all ragged and soiled, and the tears had run over the dust upon her face, making it streaked, and disfiguring it sadly.
Altogether, she was a very miserable
little object, when a lady, walking along the road, suddenly came upon her, and stopped to see what was the matter.
As the lady gazed upon the strange, ragged little creature, there came tears into her eyes, and she said softly, as if speaking to herself,—
“Who would think that this is the daughter of a great King?”
The child, seeing a beautiful lady before her, jumped from the ground, and, with shame, began to shake herself from the dirt that clung to her garments; but the stranger, taking no notice of her untidy condition, clasped the child’s fingers in her white hand, and told her to lead her to her home.