And she sat down on the bed and hid her face in the pillows, and cried from different emotions. At last she wiped away the tears and looked up, her eyes falling on the shining stone again.
“I love them all as if they were my children, and that somehow the most, because it was the first. And I believe it loves me too. Look how beautiful a ray of light it sends towards me! And I never hoped to see it again.”
Rosalie took it up, and kissed it, and shed tears upon it, but the light from it was never dimmed; one might have thought it was made tear-proof.
“I need no other colour. This is quite enough. And you, Brightcoat.”
“Yes; of course, there’s me,” said the other thoughtfully.
This was the beginning of the day. But when the postman came, besides bringing letters and cards without end, some of the latter bearing halfpenny stamps after the style of circulars, he brought a parcel, also directed to Rosalie, in handwriting that the frog declared was superior to anything it had ever seen.
It was opened in public, and inside was a pair of slippers as white as snow, and worked in diamonds. And they were such a curious shape they looked as if they must really be antique, because they had little square toes, and gold straps across. They reminded one of the daintiest garden clogs, so light were they, and when Rosalie put them on she wanted to dance right away.
“They’re made on the same pattern as the little wooden clog I have upstairs,” cried she. “Look, Miss Crokerly, they dance of themselves,” and in excess of spirits she pirouetted round the room, and kissed both those elderly people from superabundance of excessively childish glee.
Where they had come from she didn’t know. She thought they had come from the same source as the first, although they came by post. So that evening she dressed for the real pleasure of the thing. And when it came to pinning the jewel into the bosom of her dress, her hands trembled just because she loved it so. It shed just the same soft shades on to her dress as the light of the moon might shed on to the snow—a passing green and golden and palest blue that melted into white. And on her shoulder the ever—present frog, and a new light in her eyes, because the ice-tears had rolled out of them.
And underneath the shining jewel her heart beat quickly. She went with Sir John, Miss Crokerly having preceded them in Mr. Barringcourt’s carriage some time ago.