"No; she's forced to wear a plain black dress in her wanderings, and she isn't beautiful at all. She's not very young either, and ugly lines are beginning to creep about her eyes and across her forehead; and one day, not long ago she found—what do you suppose?"
"A bag of gold?"
"A bag o' dold?" echoed Richard.
"No, dear; this poor, forlorn little princess found three silver hairs growing among the brown ones just over her ear."
Miss Tripp's sweet, drawling voice trembled slightly as she went on with her little fable. "The princess felt so badly that she shed bitter tears when she saw the glitter of those three silver hairs, because she knew that she could never, never catch up with youth any more."
"What youth—the fairy prince?" Doris wanted to know.
And Richard smiled seraphically as he trilled, "Oh, dood! It was 'e pwince!"
"No, darlings; there isn't any prince at all in this story. There was one—once—away back in the beginning of it; but he—went away—to a far country, and he—never came back."
"Did the princess cry?"
"Did her cwy?"