VI.
THE MAGIC RING.
“Don’t you see,” said Mr. Thimblefinger, with apparent seriousness, “that if we hadn’t left off the story of the little girl who went to the Well at the End of the World just where we did, she would have had no time to grow?”
Buster John smiled faintly, but Sweetest Susan took the statement seriously, though she said nothing. Drusilla boldly indorsed it.
“I speck dat’s so,” she said, “kaze when de lil’ gal got back home wid dat vial she wa’n’t in no fix fer ter cut up dem kind er capers what de tales tell about.”
“Certainly not,” remarked Mr. Thimblefinger, “but now she has had time to grow up to be a young lady, almost. Names go for so little down here that I haven’t told you hers. She was named Eolen. Some said it was a beautiful name, but her stepmother and her stepmother’s daughter said it was very ugly. Anyhow, that was her name, and whether it was ugly or whether it was beautiful, she had to make the best of it.
“Well, Eolen went home when the old man gave her the vial of water from the Well at the End of the World. She hid the vial beneath her apron until she reached her own room, and then she placed it at the very bottom of her little trunk,—a trunk that had belonged to her mother, who was dead.
“Nothing happened for a long time. Whenever Friday fell on the thirteenth of a month, Eolen would rub a drop of the sparkling water on her forehead, and she grew to be the loveliest young lady that ever was seen. Her stepsister was not bad-looking, but, compared with Eolen, she was ugly. The contrast between them was so great that people could not help noticing it and making remarks about it. Some of these remarks came to the ears of her stepmother.
“Now a stepmother can be just as nice and as good as anybody, but this particular stepmother cared for nothing except her own child, and she soon came to hate Eolen for being so beautiful. She had never treated the child kindly, but now she began to treat her cruelly. Eolen never told her father, but somehow he seemed to know what was going on, and he treated her more affectionately each day, as her stepmother grew more cruel.
“This lasted for some time, but finally Eolen’s father fell ill and died, and then, although she had many admirers, she was left without a friend she could confide in or rely on. To make matters worse, her stepmother produced a will in which her husband had left everything to her and nothing to Eolen. The poor girl didn’t know what to do. She knew that her father had made no such will, but how could she prove it? She happened to think of the vial of sparkling waters. She found it and turned it upside down.
“On the instant there was a loud knock at the street door. Eolen would have gone to open it, but her stepmother was there before her. She peeped from behind the curtains in the hallway, and saw a tall, richly-dressed stranger standing on the steps.