‘She shall grow uglier every day, except Sundays, and every Sunday she shall be seven times prettier than the Sunday before.’
[p164]
‘Why not uglier every day, and a double dose on Sunday?’ asked the youngest and spitefullest of the wicked Bell-people.
‘Because there’s no rule without an exception,’ said the eldest and hoarsest and laziest, ‘and she’ll feel it all the more if she’s pretty once a week. And,’ he added, ‘this shall go on till she finds a bell that doesn’t ring, and can’t ring, and never will ring, and wasn’t made to ring.’
‘Why not for ever?’ asked the young and spiteful.
‘Nothing goes on for ever,’ said the eldest Bell-person, ‘not even ill-luck. And we have to leave her a way out. It doesn’t matter. She’ll never know what it is. Let alone finding it.’
Then they went back to the belfry and rearranged as well as they could the comfortable web-and-owls’ nest furniture of their houses which had all been shaken up and disarranged by that absurd ringing of bells at the birth of a Princess that nobody could really be pleased about.
When the Princess was two weeks old the King said to the Queen:
‘My love—the Princess is not so handsome as I thought she was.’
‘Nonsense, Henry,’ said the Queen, ‘the light’s not good, that’s all.’
[p165]
Next day—it was Sunday—the King pulled back the lace curtains of the cradle and said: