The Prince burst into a fit of laughing. It all seemed so exceedingly silly; he wondered that a wise old woman like his godmother should talk such nonsense.
“Stuff-and-nonsense, you mean,” said she, answering, to his great alarm, his unspoken thoughts. “Did I not tell you some people called me by that name? Never mind; it doesn't harm me.”
And she laughed—her merry laugh—as child-like as if she were the Prince's age instead of her own, whatever that might be. She certainly was a most extraordinary old woman.
“Believe me or not, it doesn't matter,” said she. “Here is the cloak: when you want to go traveling on it, say 'Abracadabra, dum, dum, dum'; when you want to come back again, say 'Abracadabra, tum tum ti.' That's all; good-by.”
A puff of most pleasant air passing by him, and making him feel for the moment quite strong and well, was all the Prince was conscious of. His most extraordinary godmother was gone.
“Really now, how rosy your Royal Highness' cheeks have grown! You seem to have got well already,” said the nurse, entering the room.
“I think I have,” replied the Prince very gently—he felt gently and kindly even to his grim nurse. “And now let me have my dinner, and go you to your sewing as usual.”
The instant she was gone, however, taking with her the plates and dishes, which for the first time since his illness he had satisfactorily cleared, Prince Dolor sprang down from his sofa, and with one or two of his frog-like jumps reached the cupboard where he kept his toys, and looked everywhere for his traveling-cloak.
Alas! it was not there.
While he was ill of the doldrums, his nurse, thinking it a good opportunity for putting things to rights, had made a grand clearance of all his “rubbish”—as she considered it: his beloved headless horses, broken carts, sheep without feet, and birds without wings—all the treasures of his baby days, which he could not bear to part with. Though he seldom played with them now, he liked just to feel they were there.