Kora sank down by the fireside, too weary to make any protest. She stretched out her cold hands to the ruddy glow, and began to dry her wet dress and hood. Meanwhile the Wise Woman’s servants were busy preparing the evening meal, which was soon ready. A black cat served the soup and a white cat the fish, a grey cat the joint and a tortoiseshell cat the sweets. Then a sandy cat lit a taper and lighted her to her room, where she soon fell sound asleep.
When the morning came, Kora at once sought out the Wise Woman, told her her whole story, and begged for advice.
“The unknown country to which no man has found the way,” replied the Wise Woman, “is the country whither the cuckoos go in winter, nor do I myself know the way, but if you will consent to be turned into a cuckoo, you will at once be able to find it.”
Rather than fall again into her husband’s hands, Kora willingly agreed, and the Wise Woman thereupon, with a wave of her stick, changed her into a cuckoo, which spread its wings and flew away, far across the pathless sea.
The troll meanwhile felt so sure that his wife would not again try to escape, that several days passed before he thought it necessary to look into the magic crystal. Great was his dismay, therefore, when he did at last look into it, to see nothing but a blank. Never before had it failed him. He hurried home with all speed, and finding his house deserted, he at once resolved to set out in pursuit of Kora. But since his heart was in his treasure, he would not start before he had gathered together as much as he could possibly carry with him, and had loaded it upon his back. He travelled a long way, through forest and field and heath, till at last he came to the shores of a great ocean. Here he took a boat, and began paddling himself out to sea, but the sack of gold proved so heavy that the boat sank, and the troll was drowned.
But Kora reached the unknown land in safety, and married the king of the cuckoos, with whom she lived in great happiness and contentment, and they reigned together over the most beautiful country in all the world.
CHAPTER X
IN WHICH THE HEROINE HAS A BIRTHDAY
As the weather brightened and warmed into midsummer, most of Philomène’s free time was spent in the garden, and consequently with Sweet William.
It was on a morning towards the end of June that she awoke with the delightful sensation that her birthday had come at last. Had she not waited a whole year for it? By her plate at breakfast time lay a big box of wild flowers, sent by the gardener’s wife at the Cushats. Godmother had taught her the names of all sorts of flowers during her last summer holidays, so that she recognised almost all in the box, but a certain little white, blue and red pyramid was quite a stranger to her; she therefore christened it “N. or M.,” like the person in the Catechism, and N. or M. it remained to her ever afterwards, though later she knew it to be a kind of wild orchid. The doctor gave her a sketch-book and a whole box full of beautiful new pencils, and Miss Mills a book called “Legends from River and Mountain.”
“I haven’t a notion what it’s about,” she said, apologetically, “but I thought from the title that you might take to it, and it was written by a queen.”