And the thought warmed her heart as the great horse thundered on through the dawn-light.
When at last, creeping softly on little noiseless feet, the Mouse-Kitchen-Maid re-entered the great hall, she saw that she was only just in time, for the black Cat was purring and looking back at the Prince as she walked, waving her black tail towards the further door of the hall, and the Prince, more bewitched than ever, was slowly following her.
Then the Real-Kitchen-Maid-Mouse uttered a squeak, and rushed across the porphyry floor, and the black Cat, true to its cat nature, left purring at the Prince and sprang after the Mouse, and the Mouse at its best speed, made for the garden where ran the stream that fed the marble basins where the royal gold-fish lived. The Prince understood nothing save that the enchanting black furry creature was leaving him, and in an instant he was alone. He followed to the door, and saw the Cat springing along the passage down the stairs—he followed fast—then along another passage that passed the foot of the back stairs, and he saw that the back stairs were like a water-fall—water was running down in a torrent and meandering away down the brick passage and out into the faint new sunshine.
When the Mouse saw this stream, she thought, “I’m saved.” She never thought of wondering how a stream came to be running down the back stairs of the palace. When she came to think of it afterwards she always believed that the Great White Rat had managed it somehow. She never knew that it was really a great flood from the royal bathroom, where the royal housemaid, in her eagerness to run away from the witch, had left all the royal bath-taps full on.
The Mouse bounded across the stream—the Cat saw the danger, but she could not stop herself. She, too, crossed the stream, and as she crossed it she turned into the wicked fairy Malevola—cobwebs, and snakes, and newts, and bat’s-wings, and all.
The Prince put his hand to his head like one awakening from sleep, and the horrible fairy vanished suddenly and for ever.
Then the Mouse ran trembling to the Prince, and in its thin little mouse’s voice told him all.
“My love and my lady,” he said, holding the Mouse against his cheek. “I will marry you now. That will carry out the wicked fairy’s prophecy. Then we will go back to the Great White Rat, and you shall be changed into a Princess.”
So the Prince rang the church bells till all the people came out of their holes where they had been hiding, to see the strange spectacle of a Prince married to a Mouse.