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 know if you really would come to me when I beat my drum."

"Very well," answered the King; "but do not call me again unless you really need me." Then he returned to his hunting.

The next day, when the King had gone out hunting as usual, the four Queens again came to see the gardener's daughter. They begged and begged her to beat her drum once more, "just to see if the King will really come to see you this time." At first she refused, but at last she consented. So she beat her drum, and the King came to her. But when he found she was neither ill nor in trouble, he was angry, and said to her, "Twice I have left my hunting and lost my game to come to you when you did not need me. Now you may call me as much as you like, but I will not come to you," and then he went away in a rage.

The third day the gardener's daughter fell ill, and she beat and beat her kettle-drum; but the King never came. He heard her kettle-drum, but he thought, "She does not really want me; she is only trying to see if I will go to her."

Meanwhile the four other Queens came to her, and they said, "Here it is the custom before a child is born to bind its mother's eyes with a handkercheif that she may not see it just at first. So let us bind your eyes." She answered, "Very well, bind my eyes." The four wives then tied a handkerchief over them.

Soon after, the gardener's daughter had a beautiful little son, with a moon on his forehead and a star on his chin, and before the poor mother had seen him, the four wicked Queens took the boy to the nurse and said to her, "Now you must not let this child make the least sound for fear his