Page:Half a hundred hero tales of Ulysses and the men of old.djvu/299

 THE STORY OF NAUSICAA

BY M. M. BIRD

NE night, Nausicaa, sole daughter of Alcinous, the Phæacian King, had a dream. She dreamt that the daughter of Dymas, her favorite playmate, stood at her bedside and gently chid her. "Shame upon thee, lie-a-bed," she cried, "to waste the shining hours. Twill soon be thy wedding-day, and thy bridal robe and the garments for thy bridesmaids have still to be washed and bleached. Get up and ask thy father to order for thee the wain and mules to draw it, and we ll all go a-washing, thou and I and our favorite playmates, to that clear pool where the river pauses before it plunges into the sea."

At dawn Nausicaa awoke, but daylight did not dispel the dream, for it was Minerva herself who sent it. She waylaid her father as he went to the Council of the Elders and cried to him: "Father dear, may I have the high wain and the mules to-day? There is much soiled raiment to be washed mine and thine and that of my three brothers who dwell with me in the palace." But of the bridal of her dream she said nothing, for she was a bashful maiden.

And her father, smiling at her strange eagerness, said, "My darling child may take the car; whate'er our daughter asks, we give."

Swiftly her attendants prepared the wain and harnessed the mules. They loaded it with the soiled robes and dresses that the maiden brought from her bower,

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