She bent toward the child, and Ellen looked into her eyes. Such wonderful eyes they were. As she looked, Ellen seemed to lose herself in their clear depths. She lost all sense of where she was—even of the lady herself.
She never could tell afterward whether the lady spoke and told her the story, or whether she saw it mirrored in those eyes, or whether she was herself the little Princess Goldenhair living it all, but this was the fairy tale.
[Chapter Eleven]
The Princess Goldenhair
There were once a king and queen who had no children, though they greatly longed for them.
One day the queen was sitting at the window sewing, and the sunlight shone upon the golden thimble she wore, so that it fairly dazzled the eyes. "I wish," said the queen, "that I had a little daughter and that her hair was as golden as my thimble in the sun."
Soon after this a daughter was indeed born to the queen, and the hair upon her head was of pure gold, but in the hour that she was born the queen herself died.