"Welcome home!" said the stranger. "This is my palace, and you shall be my queen, fair maiden; for I am the King of the North Pole, and never, till now, have I seen one worthy to share my throne."
A train of milk-white bears with golden chains around their necks came out to receive the king and Ethelinda. They entered the palace, which blazed with splendid jewels on roof and walls. The throne was made of a single opal, and the queen's crown, which was immediately placed on Ethelinda's head, was composed of a circlet of diamonds, each one as large as a robin's egg.
The marriage took place at once; and Ethelinda's husband proved so kind and loving, that she soon forgot her early sorrows, and became as happy as all queens are supposed to be. Her fame spread into many countries; and after a time, some celebrated traveller, who visited her court, went back to the city where Ethelinda's wicked step-mother still lived and flourished, and gave the Duchess a message from the beautiful Queen of the North Pole.
"Tell her that I forgive her all her unkindness to me," Ethelinda had charged him to say, "since it was the means of securing to me my present joy, and the love of my dearest husband."
Ethelinda even sent gifts to her step-mother and sister; to each a jewelled necklace of immense value, and a robe woven from the down of the King's own eider-ducks, which only sovereigns might wear. The Duchess and Finella eagerly seized the presents, but they almost died of spite to hear of Ethelinda's good luck. Night and day they wondered how they, too, might have similar fortune; and at length the Duchess determined to dress her daughter in coarse clothes like those Ethelinda had worn when found by the King of the North Pole, and to make her sally forth to the border of the forest.
Snow was falling fast when the young woman reached the wood. She was dreadfully cold, and began complaining and quarrelling, as usual. She did not hear the approach of a sleigh until it was close beside her. There sat a handsome youth, driving a fleet coal-black steed. He politely invited her to take a drive, and, with many groans over her stiff limbs, she got in. They flew over the ground, and for not a single minute did Finella cease finding fault with everything. She abused her mother for exposing her to this dreadful cold, and vowed she should have rheumatism and lumbago and pleurisy and influenza, all together, next day. Her feet had chilblains already, and her hands were so chapped they would never be fit to be seen. In this agreeable strain, she went on till her companion, growing impatient of her whining tones, blew a sudden breath upon her—when, behold! all the girl's conversation was frozen on her tongue, a few cross words, like icicles, clinging to the tip of it!
When they stopped at the palace door, the King of the North Pole (for he it was who had picked up Ethelinda's step-sister), instead of having her conducted in state to her apartments by a train of snow-white bears with golden chains about their necks, gave the cross girl in charge to an old brown bear of a housekeeper, with instructions to keep her locked up until the Queen should choose to set her free.
Ethelinda's kind heart softened toward her step-sister; and, begging the King to forgive her, the Queen hastened to set the prisoner at liberty. Finella, dressed in the Queen's own robes, was taken into the royal nurseries to see two splendid rosy babies, rolling upon soft furs, and romping with a gentle little bear-cub, who was their playmate.
The princes & their playmate.