"Ah! I recognise it now!" she cried—"the sweet voice of my fairy god-mother! Oh, wise and kind Gaieia, still be my guardian, as you have ever been, and make me in the future all that I have failed to make myself in the past!"
The laugh that answered her entreaty was as gay and sweet as ever, but came from afar; for, in fact, the good fairy had sped away, having a great deal still to do for her froward godchild, and that without delay: amongst other things to make King Kloxoxskin immediately evacuate the palace and dominions of the Princess's father, under the idea that he was escaping from a great peril which would certainly have overwhelmed him if he had persisted in forcing the Princess Disdainana to marry him.
"HER RUDE VESSEL WAS ON THE POINT OF SINKING" (p. 274).
More than that—a task much more difficult to accomplish—the merry fairy had to overcome the prejudice of the Queen, whose obstinacy had returned in full force as soon as she was once again able to exercise it on the side of her anti-matrimonial fancies. But, as everybody knows, nothing can permanently withstand the power and strategy of a good fairy; so it came about—really as a matter of course—that, her daughter having accepted for her husband the charming Prince who had saved her life, the Queen consented to receive him as her son-in-law; and it is a well-attested matter of history, that nobody ever heard her utter a single word in dissent from her husband's freely-expressed delight at the saving of his dynasty from what had, for awhile, seemed its inevitable extinction.
The Necklace of Tears.
ONCE, many years ago, there lived in Ombrelande a most beautiful Princess. Now, Ombrelande is a country which still exists, and in which many strange things still happen, although it is not to be found in any map of the world that I know of.