“Then let Ruggedo strike one of them and look at your brother’s face, while we all turn our backs. Ruggedo made your brother ugly, so I guess he can stand the horror of looking at him, if the charm isn’t broken.”
Agreeing to this, Ruggedo took the match and lighted it. He gave one look and then blew out the match.
“Ugly as ever!” he said with a shudder. “So it wasn’t the kiss of a Mortal Maid, after all.”
“Let me try,” proposed the Rose Princess, in her sweet voice. “I am a Mortal Maid who was once a Fairy. Perhaps my kiss will break the charm.”
Files did not wholly approve of this, but he was too generous to interfere. So the Rose Princess felt her way through the darkness to Shaggy’s brother and kissed him.
Ruggedo struck another match, while they all turned away.
“No,” announced the former King; “that didn’t break the charm, either. It must be the kiss of a Fairy that is required—or else my memory has failed me altogether.”
“Polly,” said Betsy, pleadingly, “won’t you try?”
“Of course I will!” answered Polychrome, with a merry laugh. “I’ve never kissed a mortal man in all the thousands of years I have existed, but I’ll do it to please our faithful Shaggy Man, whose unselfish affection for his ugly brother deserves to be rewarded.”