"Are you positive that I am not a cat?"
Dorothy courtesied.
"Well, I am not a cat," said the princess. "I am a true princess from Persia, travelling incognita. You are the first person who has pierced my disguise. You must have very extraordinary eyes. Aren't you hungry?"
Dorothy courtesied.
"Come here and eat the stew," ordered the princess, in a commanding tone. "Meantime I will cook my own supper."
With that the princess gave a graceful leap across the floor; her gray velvet robe fluttered like a gray wing. Dorothy saw a little mouse scud before her; then in an instant the princess had him! But the moment the princess lifted the mouse, he became a gray pigeon, all dressed for cooking.
The princess sat down on the hearth and put the pigeon on the coals to broil.
"You had better eat your stew," said she; "I won't offer you any of this pigeon, because you could not help suspecting it was mouse."
So Dorothy timidly took up the stew, and began to eat it; she was in reality nearly starved.
"Now," said the Persian princess, when she had finished, "you had better do that mending, while I finish cooking and eat my own supper."