“A really, truly one?” she asked, bringing her eyes on a level with his.
“Yes; tell me about yourself.”
“All right. Once upon a time there was a beautiful princess, and she was as good as she was beautiful; never cross, never impatient, always serene, gentle, and loving. She lived with her cruel stepmother—”
“Wasn’t there a prince?” he queried anxiously.
“Not any real one,” was the severe retort, “just a few little imitation ones. But she had a taste above paste jewels, so she determined—”
At this moment the air was pierced by a shrill cry from the road, followed by lusty weeping.
Meg was half-way to the gate before Robert started, and when he reached there he found her exclaiming pityingly over a small, ragged, and decidedly dirty boy, who was sitting in the dust of the road nursing an injured toe.
“How did it happen?” she was asking as Robert came up and leaned against the fence.
The hurt, slight in itself, assumed new importance in the eyes of the boy, and he answered proudly, between the sniffles into which his sobs had subsided, “I was running fast, an’ I never seen that piece of broken bottle, an’ I stepped right on it, an’ cut my toe, an’ it hurts just awful.”
“I know it does, you poor, dear thing,” was Meg’s sympathetic rejoinder; “come right in the yard with me, where it’s cool, and I’ll fix it all right.”