From this remark you can understand perfectly well that the particular young man of whom her father spoke had not yet come along. And I'm sure you'll also know that shutting herself up in the tower-room and bolting the trap-door was not going to keep him away when it was time for him to come. Yet I don't believe that you'd have recognized him when he did come any more than the Princess did. This is how it happened:
One afternoon when as usual she was working at her embroidery and singing as she worked, suddenly there was a flutter of wings at the eastern window and a lovely Pigeon came flying into the room. It circled three times about the Princess's head and then alighted on the embroidery frame. The Princess reached out her hand and the bird, instead of taking fright, allowed her to stroke its gleaming neck. Then she took it gently in her hands and fondled it to her bosom, kissing its bill and smoothing its plumage with her lips.
"You beautiful thing!" she cried. "How I love you!"
"If you really love me," the Pigeon said, "have a bowl of milk here at this same hour to-morrow and then we'll see what we'll see."
With that the bird spread its wings and flew out the western window.
The Princess was so excited that for the rest of the afternoon she forgot her embroidery.
"Did the Pigeon really speak?" she asked herself as she stood staring out the western window, "or have I been dreaming?"
The next day when she climbed the winding stairs she went slowly for she carried in her hands a brimming bowl of milk.
"Of course it won't come again!" she said, and she made herself sit down quietly before the embroidery frame and work just as though she expected nothing.
But exactly at the same hour as the day before there was a flutter of wings at the eastern window, the sound of a gentle coo! coo! and there was the Pigeon ready to be loved and caressed.