She looked at him with her clear piercing eyes, sharp enough to see through everything, and it seemed as if they changed from bird's eyes to human eyes, the very eyes of his godmother, whom he had not seen for ever so long. But the minute afterwards she became only a bird, and with a screech and a chatter spread her wings and flew away.
Prince Dolor fell into a kind of swoon, of utter misery, bewilderment, and exhaustion, and when he awoke he found himself in his own room—alone and quiet—with the dawn just breaking, and the long rim of yellow light in the horizon glimmering through the window panes.
CHAPTER IX.
When Prince Dolor sat up in bed, trying to remember where he was, whither he had been, and what he had seen the day before, he perceived that his room was empty.
Generally, his nurse rather worried him by breaking his slumbers, coming in and "setting things to rights," as she called it. Now, the dust lay thick upon chairs and tables; there was no harsh voice heard to scold him for not getting up immediately—which, I am sorry to say, this boy did not always do. For he so enjoyed lying still, and thinking lazily, about everything or nothing, that, if he had not tried hard against it, he would certainly have become like those celebrated
"Two little men
Who lay in their bed till the clock struck ten."
It was striking ten now, and still no nurse was to be seen. He was rather relieved at first, for he felt so tired; and besides when he stretched out his arm, he found to his dismay that he had gone to bed in his clothes.
Very uncomfortable he felt, of course; and just a little frightened. Especially when he began to call and call again, but nobody answered. Often he used to think how nice it would be to get rid of his nurse and live in this tower all by himself—like a sort of monarch, able to do everything he liked, and leave undone all that he did not want to do; but now that this seemed really to have happened, he did not like it at all.