Looking regretfully enough after the fast-disappearing figure of Master Jack o’ Lantern, Wynkin caught up the lantern and, setting it straight, he jumped into the hole, where the bush was already smouldering to nothing. He peered through the open grating, and the next moment he passed in. “Where are we, I wonder?” he said to himself, “and—hullo! what’s this?” he went on, as he nearly set foot on something that glittered in the lantern gleam, bright as a star.
It was a blue ribbon rosette, tied with silver cord, of the exact pattern of the rosettes the little Prince was wearing on his shoes. It was all sodden and soiled now with the mud it lay in, and Wynkin picked it up as carefully as if it had been some little wounded bird, and placed it inside his vest next his heart, which beat fast with eager expectation. Then he hastened on, looking right and left all the way he went, threading the windings of the narrow passage, and up the twisting staircases, till at last he could go no farther because the wooden panel barred his progress. “Oh, ho!” again said he to himself, as he set his shoulder against the wood and pushed it with so much more force than it required that it flapped round before he could right himself, and he fell sprawling, lantern and all, along the floor.
“By my faith!” he said, as he picked himself and the lantern up, and stood looking round while he rubbed his shoulder, “it is the Cedar Room!”
And then more clearly than ever Wynkin began to see daylight, but all the same his face was very grave and anxious, for he was vexed with himself that he had not first given chase to Master Jack o’ Lantern, as he called him. “For what could he be wanting skulking round the place like that for? Ill news flies apace, and I doubt not the malcontents are aware already of the child’s escape. Well,” he added more cheerfully,
“‘Hot boiled beans, and very good butter,
Ladies and gentlemen, come to supper.’
but for all the flare he made, he warn’t very warm, I fancy. The boy is not in hiding hereabouts, if that red cloak means anything.”
