They waited while the Princess gathered up her skirt where it trailed,—soft outside, but fluffy under,—and threw it over her arm, to start fair: One, two, three, and away!
The Kitten won, because she truly ran very fast and she looked straight ahead, but Pat wanted to see behind at the same time, to know if the others were gaining.
By the Shadow Pool, they two watched the Princess with Prudence beside her—very companionable—walking the last bit of it—across the little bridge below, then turning up the dark path on the edge of the ravine, with trees arching over from the hillside. Looking out the other way through a gap in the trees, they could see—like a picture in a frame—the steps coming down the terrace and the path curving down by the petunias, all in the sun, then dropping away out of sight into the trees that it came out of to cross the bridge.
In here it was cool and deep shade, in tall woods on the steep hillsides that opened out like a “V.” There were rocks with maidenhair and moss in the banks behind; and in the point of the “V”—higher than any one could reach—a thin waterfall came over the edge of the rock, and fell a little way, and slid the rest into the still pool with goldfish in it, and others that were the same color as shadows in water and scarcely showed unless they darted across. The water went on over another edge that was made for it, and ran away at the bottom of the ravine,—hunting for the sea; but the fishes lived there for always. There were seats around the pool in convenient places where a tree or a rock made part of it and twisted wood the rest. But there was one broad seat with a high twisted back against the rocks behind, and a long flat rock before it for a footstool, that was stately for the Princess.
She pulled out long pins,—curious ones, carved at the top,—and the hat that wasn’t a rose, but grew up as if it were part of her, came off and left her altogether finished without it, with coils on top.
And because the Princess was willing, Miss Phyllisy put it on her own head. The Shadow Pool was a mirror, so she could see if it looked as if it were growing there, and Pat looked with her. But Pat looked also at the back of Miss Phyllisy’s head. “It ought to be more hair—done up,” she said. Phyllisy twisted her head to see in the pool, and she put up her hand and felt down her hair behind; it ended in a point in the middle of her neck,—the locks crossing in from the sides,—like a very small duck’s tail, about an inch. The Kitten slipped her finger under and turned up the lock, and it curved around the finger.
So Phyllisy took the hat off and they put it carefully where it wouldn’t fall, and “would be all right, Dearie,”—and they settled down in their most usual places: Phyllisy, where she could look into the pool from across and see the Princess upside down; Pat, in the narrow seat in the crotch between two trees,—but she would move to another pretty soon, because she always did,—and the Kitten, sitting on her foot in the seat next largest to the Princess’s.
“It is about the last, youngest Star Person of all; and how there came to be the Pole Star,” said the Princess.
“We’ve told the Kitten what she didn’t hear, all she could understand;—so you won’t have to plan about that,” said Prudence.
“I could understand before,” said the Kitten. “I heard, too,—myself.”