NO TIME TO BE LOST.
Princess Hilda and Prince Harold sat down on a heap of rubbish that happened to be near them, and cried heartily. Tom the Cat sat before them, moving the end of his tail first one way and then the other, and looking very sorrowful out of his yellow eyes. But presently he said:
'Crying will not get poor Hector back again.'
'Can we ever get him back?' sobbed Harold.
'I would do anything!' whimpered Hilda.
'If our Fairy Aunt were only here,' said Harold, 'perhaps she could tell us what we ought to do.'
'You will not see the Fairy Aunt again,' Tom replied, 'until you have got Hector out of the grey tower, where he is at this moment standing, with his face to the wall and his hands behind his back, in the one-hundred-and-first corner.'
'But what can we do?' cried Hilda, beginning to weep afresh. 'We are nothing but little children.'
'Perhaps you may be able to do more than if you were grown up,' Tom replied. 'It depends a good deal upon how much you love Hector.'
'Oh!' exclaimed both the children at once; and as they could not think of anything big enough to compare their love for Hector to, they said nothing more.