softly through shades of silk and paper.
The music stopped, the laughter and voices grew louder and came nearer, there was the sound of approaching feet – and then a whole army of mortals surrounded the prince's kingdom.
They were a far smaller and finer race than the giants he had seen hitherto, with pretty fresh complexions, and wearing, some of them, soft shimmering dresses that he thought only fairies ever wore. After a little confusion, they ranged themselves in one long line completely round the plain; the taller beings glided softly about behind, and the prince prepared himself to receive their congratulations with proper dignity and modesty.
But these giants certainly had very odd ways of showing their loyalty, for they saluted him with a clinking and clattering so deafening that they would have drowned the noise of a million gnomes forging fairy armour, while every now and then came a loud report, after which a golden sparkling cascade fell creaming and bubbling from somewhere above into the crystal reservoirs prepared for it.
It was all very gratifying, no doubt – and yet, though they all pretended to be honouring him, no one seemed to pay him any more particular attention; he thought perhaps they might be feeling abashed in his presence, and that he must manage to reassure them.
But while he was thinking how he could best do this, he began to be aware that along the whole of that glittering plain things were being done without his permission which were scandalous and insulting – he saw the grisly carcases cut swiftly into pieces with flashing blades, or torn limb from limb deliberately; all the dragons were attacked and overpowered, and hauled out unresisting from their strongholds; even the fierce head was gashed hideously behind the ears!
He tried to speak and ask them what they meant by such audacity, but he could not make them hear as he could the major and the old gipsy; so he was obliged to look on while one by one the trophies dedicated to his glory were changed to shapeless heaps of ruin.
And, unless he was mistaken, the greater part of them were actually disappearing from sight altogether! It seemed impossible, for where could they all go to? and yet nothing now remained of the huge carcases but a meagre framework of bone, hanging together by shreds of skin; the strong castles were roofless walls with gaping breaches in them; and could it be that the more attractive objects were beginning to melt away in the same mysterious manner? Was it enchantment, or how – how on earth did they manage to do it?
He was no happier when he found out – for though, of course, to us eating is quite an ordinary everyday affair, only think what a shock the first sight of it must have been to a delicate fairy prince, whose mouth was simply a cherry-coloured curve, and not made to open on any terms!
He saw all the treasures he had looked upon as his very own being lifted to a long line of mouths of all sizes and shapes; the mouths opened to various widths, and – the treasures vanished, he could not tell how or where.
The mellow amber tottered and quivered for a while and was gone; even the solid creamy marble was hacked in pieces and absorbed; nothing, however beautiful or fantastic, escaped instant annihilation between those terrible bars of scarlet and flashing ivory.
Could this be Fairyland, this plain where all things beautiful were doomed – or had they brought him back to his kingdom only to make this cruel fun of him, and destroy his riches one by one before his eyes?
But before he could find any answers to these sad questions he chanced to look straight in front of him, and there he saw a face which made his little sugar heart almost melt within him, with a curious feeling, half pleasure, half pain, that was quite new to him.
It was a girl's face, of course, and the prince had not looked at her very long before he forgot all about his kingdom.
He was relieved to see that she at least was too generous to join in the work of destruction that was going on all around her – indeed, she seemed to dislike it as much as he did himself, for only a little of the tinted snow passed her soft lips.
Now and then she laughed a little silvery laugh, and shook out her rippling gold-brown hair at something the being next to her said – a great boy-mortal, with a red face, bold eyes, and grasping brown hands, which were fatal to everything within their range.
How the prince did hate that boy! – he found to his joy that he could understand what they said, and began to listen jealously to their conversation.
'I say,' the boy (whose name, it seemed, was Bertie) was saying, as he received a plateful of floating fragments of the lacework palace, 'you aren't eating anything, Mabel. Don't you care about suppers? I do.'
'I'm not hungry,' she said, evidently feeling this a distinction; 'I've been out so much this fortnight.'
'How jolly!' he observed, 'I only wish I had. But I say,' he added confidentially, 'won't they make you take a grey powder soon? They would me.'
'I'm never made to take anything at all nasty,' she said – and the prince was indignant that any one should have dared to think otherwise.
'I suppose,' continued the boy, 'you didn't manage to get any of that cake the conjurer made in Uncle John's hat, did you?'
'No, indeed,' she said, and made a little face; 'I don't think I should like cake that came out of anybody's hat!'
'It was very decent cake,' he said; 'I got a lot of it. I was afraid it might spoil my appetite for supper – but it hasn't.'
'What a very greedy boy you are, Bertie,' she remarked; 'I suppose you could eat anything?'
'At home I think I could, pretty nearly,' he said, with a proud confidence, 'but not at old Tokoe's, I can't. Tokoe's is where I go to school, you know. I can't stand the resurrection-pie on Saturdays – all the week they save up the bones and rags and things, and when it comes up – '
'I don't want to hear,' she interrupted; 'you talk about nothing but horrid things to eat, and it isn't a bit interesting.'
Bertie allowed himself a brief interval for refreshment unalloyed by conversation, after which he began again: 'Mabel, if they have dancing after supper, dance with me.'
'Are you sure you know how to dance?' she inquired rather fastidiously.
'Oh, I can get through all right,' he replied. 'I've learnt. It's not harder than drilling. I can dance the Highland Schottische and the Swedish dance, any-way.'
'Any one can dance those. I don't call that dancing,' she said.
'Well, but try me once, Mabel; say you will,' said he.
'I don't believe they will have dancing,' she said; 'there are so many very young children here and they get in the way so. But I hope there won't be any more games – games are stupid.'
'Only to girls,' said Bertie; 'girls never care about any fun.'
'Not your kind of fun,' she said, a little vaguely. 'I don't mind hide-and-seek in a nice old house with long passages and dark corners and secret panels – and ghosts even – that's jolly; but I don't care much about running round and round a row of silly chairs, trying to sit down when the music stops and keep other people out – I call it rude.'
'You didn't seem to think it so rude just now,' he retorted; 'you were laughing quite as much as any one; and I saw you push young Bobby Meekin off the last chair of all, and sit on it yourself, anyhow.'
'Bertie, you didn't,' she cried, flushing angrily.
'I did though.'
'But I tell you I didn't!
'And I say you did!'
'If you will go on saying I did, when I'm quite sure I never did anything of the sort,' she said, 'please don't speak to me again; I shan't answer if you do. And I think you're a particularly ill-bred boy – not polite, like my brothers.'
'Your brothers are every bit as rude as I am. If they aren't, they're milksops – I should be sorry to be a milksop.'
'My brothers are not milksops – they could fight you!' she cried, with a little defiant ring in her voice that the prince thought perfectly charming.
'As