HE Prince and Isal had now been married nearly five years, so that Isal was then eighteen years old and even more beautiful than when the prince found her in the garden. The royal family was at first displeased that the Prince should marry a peasant maiden, but Isal was so good that one could not help loving her, and soon every one said that there never had been such a Queen in Percan. As for the Prince, he loved her more than the whole of his kingdom; he always called her his Morning-Star. And Isal loved the Prince and was very happy in the palace where she had everything she could desire; but often in the five years did she remember the woodman's hut on the bank of the great blue river where she had spent her childhood; often she thought of her father living there alone, reft of his little daughter, the one comfort of his life. Then would the Prince come with his kind love, and quite drive away such sad thoughts. As the years went by she thought less of her former life; indeed it was so different from the present that she persuaded herself that she had died in her cot the night after finding the Old Brown Coat, that now she was in the Paradise she had heard her father tell about, and that the birds—the Phœnix and the Tufters—were the winged spirits that brought her there.
The Phœnix was now very nearly five hundred years old; in a few weeks he would have to build his nest and die. The Tufters too were five years older; but five years makes a great deal more difference with them than it does with the Phœnix. It makes them much wiser; even the one that had been rash was quite prudent now. They waited still on the old bird and brought him all the information they could find about the affairs of the world.
"I wonder how the Old Brown Coat does," said the Tufter who had once been rash, as they all stood round the Phœnix one night. "That was a very grand event we brought about—the marriage of the Prince with Isal. If it had not been for us, Isal might still have been only a woodman's daughter and not a Queen at all!" Here the Phœnix spoke, but with a very muffled voice; his age prevented him from talking very loud or much at a time; he was apt to repeat himself, too, sometimes, and to ramble in his remarks. But the Tufters always listened very respectfully to whatever he had to say: he was so old and so wise; everything he said would bear reflection.
"You are a goose. My great-great-great grandfather made the Old Brown Coat. He was called Phœnix the Tailor. The world is growing very degenerate. I am five hundred years old very nearly. I don't know what will become of it when I die. The Prince is very well, but he did not know me when he saw me in the garden. I was respected, though. The gardener knew me, and the people shouted. My great—"
The Phœnix was going on with some of his reminiscences, or perhaps beginning again, when just at this point there was a rustling in the bushes, and in burst the oldest of the Tufters who had been away hunting for news. All the rest bustled about him as he smoothed his feathers to make his manners to the Phœnix.
"I have some very important news!" began he, with great dignity. "Isal's father, the woodman is dying."
"Is he, indeed!" exclaimed the rest in chorus, except the Phœnix, who stood with one eye shut, painfully distracted between the desire to administer a rebuke and to hear further.
"That may be," said he, finally, "but you should not have interrupted me while I was speaking. Besides you have not told us yet the particulars."
"I was flying up the river," proceeded the eldest Tufter, respectfully, "when I happened to recollect little Isal, and how we brought her away from her house. I was passing the very spot, so I just flew in for a moment, and there I saw the woodman, her father, lying upon his bed very sick. There was no one with him."