“Or squinting and blear-eyed,” continued the second.
“Or if his ears mortified, and turned into pigs’ feet!” sobbed out the third.
“Oh, too true! too true!” exclaimed the Queen. “I see it all. Unhappy mother that I am! All the poor child’s misfortunes, past, present, and to come, are owing to my peevish, spiteful, malicious, capricious, old, ugly witch of an aunt, Lady Abracadabra! Oh, that I had been turned into a tadpole, and the Grand Duchess of Klopsteinhesseschloffengrozen had been the only sponsor!”
It was a long while before anything like tranquillity was restored; but when the King and the Queen had been assured by the medical attendants that the Prince’s wound was by no means serious, and the child himself had ceased screaming, and the macauco had been hanged, the black mastiff began to attract attention.
“Whose dog is it?” asked one.
“Where did it come from?” said another.
But nobody could answer the question. At this moment the King called the hound to him, for the purpose of patting it. The mastiff approached, and laid its heavy fore-paws on the royal knee, and looked very wisely at the King; and then his Majesty looked as wisely as ever he could (how could he do less?) at the dog. But what was the King’s amazement, when, all of a sudden, he perceived the tan portion of the glossy hide changing into a yellow satin petticoat, and the black part into a black velvet jacket; the canine features resolving themselves into a human countenance; the fore-paws becoming hands, and hind-paws a woman’s feet, enveloped in high-heeled shoes fastened with diamond buckles?
It was even so. The Lady Abracadabra stood before him, not, however, as when he last beheld her, all smiles and affability, but stern, grave, and angry. Her eyes gleamed like coals of fire, her wrinkles were deeper than ever, and gave her face a most harsh and severe expression,—nay, her black jacket had acquired a most ominous sort of intensity, and the yellow petticoat seemed shot with a lurid flame-colour.
“So!” said she, “you have not only disobeyed all my injunctions, neglected my advice, and thwarted all my benevolent intentions, but now, when you are reaping the fruit of your misconduct, you have audacity enough to charge me with being the cause of it!”
King Katzekopf declared that he had never suspected her ladyship of anything but good will towards the prince; and had never attributed to her agency the mishaps of a spoilt boy.