"You can safely do so, Madam," he whispered. "Mirliflor will be the man—and I know where to find him." And with this he rushed off first to his own chamber, then to the Crown Prince's apartments, and finally to the gardens in search of Giroflé.
"Sidney," said the Queen, "tell the heralds to proclaim that we will give our poor darling to anyone who succeeds in delivering her.... Don't argue about it—do as I tell you!" which King Sidney did.
As for the Court, they were too paralysed by so unexpected a calamity to be of the least assistance. The ladies-in-waiting were all in floods of tears, distressed, not only by the awful fate that had overtaken "Princess Four-eyes," but by the painful reflection that any one of them might be the dragon's next victim.
"This couldn't have happened except in a place like this!" declared the Queen, now on the verge of hysteria. "And why it should have been permitted to happen to US!—It wouldn't have, Sidney, if you had only had the sense to insist on that thing being destroyed! But you didn't—and this is the result!"
"My love," said the King, "you forget. The poor girl herself insisted on its being spared. It—it's most unfortunate!"
And it certainly was.
CHAPTER XVII
THE REWARD OF VALOUR
If the Fairy Vogelflug could only have known that it was Edna and not Daphne who was really in danger from the dragon, she would have been comparatively calm. But since she did not know this, she was, as has been already stated, entirely unnerved for a time.