Five of the drawers contained jewels. The first was full of necklaces, the second held rings and brooches, the third had tiaras and chaplets, the fourth girdles, and the fifth bracelets, and they were all of the most beautiful jewels in the world—rubies, sapphires, emeralds, pearls and diamonds, and opals, and many other stones that the Princess did not even know the names of.
In the sixth drawer was a dry brown wreath that fell to pieces as Pandora lifted it. It had been jasmine once, and the Queen had worn it at her wedding.
And in the seventh drawer was just one jewelled ring. It lay on a written page.
The Princess read the writing:
'This ring is for my son's wife, or for my daughter, if I have no son. It is the magic ring given thousands of years ago to a Queen of this country. It has the power of changing the wearer into whatever shapes he chooses. But it has never been used, because the Kings of this country have always been so good and kind, and clever and beloved, that their wives could never think of any change that would not be a change for the worse. There is only one thing in the world that this jewel cannot touch or change. And this is of all things in the world the most important thing.'
Pandora kissed the written words and slipped the ring on to her finger. It was a wonderful stone, like a sapphire that had tried to change into an opal, and stopped halfway.
There was not a happier Princess living than Pandora. Yet she was not afraid of change. Girls are like this sometimes, and she was very young for her age.
She stood looking at the ring and turning it on her finger, and the fly watched her with all its hundreds of eyes.
Now, you will, perhaps, have guessed that this fly was not an ordinary fly, and you are right. But if you think he was an enchanted Prince or anything of that sort you are wrong. The fly was simply the cleverest fly of all flies—someone must be the cleverest in any society, you know—and he was just clever enough to like to be where the Princess was, and to look at her beauty with all his hundreds of eyes. He was clever enough to like this and to know that he liked it, but he was not clever enough to know why.
So now, as the Princess stood fingering her ring and trying to make her mind up, he gave an interested buzz, and the Princess jumped.