This a delicious rainbow tart.”[[2]]
[2]. King’s Works, Edit. 1776, vol. III., p. 112.
“I begin to have hopes of our apprentice,” observed Tomalin, when he had finished his supper. “There’s plenty of work for him in the meadow yonder. I want to have all the worm-casts stopped. You had better go and set about it, my little master.”
Prince Eigenwillig coloured, and, for a moment, he had a struggle with himself not to say that as he had now got a meal, he did not intend to do any more work; but experience had taught him wisdom; so he expressed his willingness to do what he was bidden, only hinting that he should be better up to his work, if he could be allowed a few hours’ sleep.
“Oh, true,” said Claribel, “I forgot that;” Then he showed the Hope of the Katzekopfs a soft bed of moss, and bade the weary child rest himself.
Prince Eigenwillig—king’s son as he was—had never eaten so delicious a meal as those few bunches of grapes, earned with the sweat of his brow, and never had he slept so sound between sheets of the finest cambric, as now on that mossy couch.
And better still, when he woke, he woke with a light heart—light, though he was far from home, and forced to work for his bread, as the Fairy’s apprentice. From the moment in which he made up his mind to take his trial cheerfully, and do what he was bidden, the whole prospect seemed to brighten before him.
And the Fairies, who, at first, appeared cross, and spiteful, and capricious towards him, by degrees softened in their manner. The feeling that he was at every body’s call, and that he had more masters to please than he could count, was certainly very disheartening at the outset; but in a few days he got reconciled to it. And then, moreover, he had the satisfaction of finding that the kind of labour to which he was put was changed. At first, and while the Fairies thought him disposed to be obstinate and self-willed, and inclined to rebel, they set him to all the dirtiest and hardest tasks they could think of; but, as they observed him growing more willing and good-humoured, they made more of a companion of him than a servant, and at length he became such a favourite, that he was allowed to join in their sports.
Hitherto he had seen nothing of the Lady Abracadabra; but when the Prince had thus gained the regard of her countrymen, she suddenly appeared among them, and inquired how their apprentice had conducted himself.
All were open mouthed in his praise. Even the beadle with the bullrush, had a word to say in his favour, and Claribel declared that he thought the Lady Abracadabra’s object was accomplished, and her godchild might be allowed to revisit his family.