“Which?” remarked Mr. Thimblefinger, with an air of having forgotten the whole business.
“Why, that about throwing the gold ring from the window,” replied Buster John.
“Well, no,” said Mr. Thimblefinger, in an absent-minded way. “In a book, you know, you can read right on if you want to, or you can put the book down and rest yourself when you get tired. But when I’m telling a story, you must give me time to rest. I’m so little, you know, that it doesn’t take much to tire me. Of course, if you don’t like the story, I can stop any time. It’s no trouble at all to stop. Just wink your eye at me twice, and I’m mum.”
“Oh, we don’t want you to stop,” said Sweetest Susan.
“No, don’t stop,” remarked Mr. Rabbit, drowsily, “because then everybody gets to talking, and I can’t doze comfortably. Your stories are as comforting to me as a feather-bed.”
“Then I’ll add a bolster to the bed,” exclaimed Mr. Thimblefinger. He hesitated a moment, and then went on with the story:—
“Of course, Eolen didn’t know what to do when her stepmother threw the gold ring from the window and pushed her from the room. She went back to her bed and lay down, but she couldn’t sleep. After a while daylight came, and then she dressed herself and went down into the garden to hunt for the ring. She searched everywhere, but the ring was not to be found.
“Now the ring could have been found very easily if it had been where it fell when Eolen’s stepmother threw it from the window. But that night a tame crow, belonging to the Prince of that country, was roosting in one of the trees in the garden.”
“Oh, was it a sure enough Prince?” asked Sweetest Susan.
“Why, certainly,” replied Mr. Thimblefinger, with great solemnity. “A make-believe Prince could never have reigned in that country. The people would have found him out, and he would have been put in the calaboose. Well, this tame crow that belonged to the Prince had wandered off over the fields, and had gone so far away from the palace that it was unable to get back before dark, and so it went to bed in one of the trees growing in the garden behind the house where Eolen lived.