‘If I were you,’ said the Bat, ‘I should go up into the attic where the youngest kitchenmaid sleeps. Feel between the thatch and the wall just above her pillow, and you’ll find a little round looking-glass. But come back here before you look at it.’
[p170]
The Princess did exactly what the Bat told her to do, and when she had come back into the parlour and shut the door she looked in the little round glass that the youngest kitchen-maid’s sweetheart had given her. And when she saw her ugly, ugly, ugly face—for you must remember she had been growing uglier every day since she was born—she screamed and then she said:
‘That’s not me, it’s a horrid picture.’
‘It is you, though,’ said the Bat firmly but kindly; ‘and now you see why you wear a veil all the week—and only look in the glass on Sunday.’
‘But why,’ asked the Princess in tears, ‘why don’t I look like that in the Sunday looking-glasses?’
‘Because you aren’t like that on Sundays,’ the Bat replied. ‘Come,’ it went on, ‘stop crying. I didn’t tell you the dread secret of your ugliness just to make you cry—but because I know the way for you to be as pretty all the week as you are on Sundays, and since you’ve been so kind to me I’ll tell you. Sit down close beside me, it fatigues me to speak loud.’
The Princess did, and listened through her veil and her tears, while the Bat told her all that I began this story by telling you.
‘My great-great-great-great-grandfather heard the tale years ago,’ he said, ‘up in the [p171 dark, dusty, beautiful, comfortable, cobwebby belfry, and I have heard scraps of it myself when the evil Bell-people were quarrelling, or talking in their sleep, lazy things!’
‘It’s very good of you to tell me all this,’ said Belinda, ‘but what am I to do?’
‘You must find the bell that doesn’t ring, and can’t ring, and never will ring, and wasn’t made to ring.’