“If we learn eight more words this afternoon and that will make twelve, will you tell ‘The White Slipper?’” asked Lesley, eagerly.
“Sure I will,” agreed Don Pancho, and the children set to work at once and learned the Spanish for donkey, crow, sheep, lamb, rabbit, man, boy and girl.
“Well, that’s done,” said Ronnie with a sigh of content, “and now ‘The White Slipper.’”
Here is the story, but it would best be told as the little Pancho heard it at his mother’s knee and not in the halting English he had learned since then.
The White Slipper[1]
“There was once a king of great riches and a great kingdom whose queen was no longer living and who would have been very lonely on his golden throne had it not been for his beautiful daughter, Diamantina.
“Only fifteen years old was Diamantina, but how beautiful and how graceful! When she rode through the streets of the city, her eyes and her jewels shone like the sun at midday and she had more lovers than there are grasses in the meadow. For all that, her father, King Balancin, had no idea of marriage for her and indeed she was too busy with her birds and her flowers to think about a husband.”
“But where is the White Slipper?” the children interrupted.
“Well, that is exactly what Balancin wanted to know,” said Stumpy, “and I will tell you all about it this very minute.
“Everybody in this world, my dears, no matter how happy he seems to be, has yet some trouble to bear, be it small or great, and Balancin’s trouble was of very good size.