"Oh, very well," she said, "just as you please! You are not obliged to have them, of course."
Poor Vance was ready to cry with vexation and hunger, and quite broke down at this last misfortune. He begged so humbly for the crusts that at last the queer old crone relented and gave them back; and never did anything taste sweeter to him than these dry and mouldy morsels of bread.
"You may sleep where you are," the woman said as he finished; and she closed the window with a slam, leaving it impossible to say where it had been.
"Oh, by the way," she cried, a moment later, sticking her head through the bark of the tree, in a way that looked very uncomfortable indeed, "about those boundaries, you know, and the Crushed Strawberry Wizard, I was going to say—But, no; on the whole, it's no matter."
And once more she disappeared, not again to be seen.
"I must say," muttered Prince Vance, "strange things happen to me all the time."
And curling himself up on the moss, he fell fast asleep from weariness.