Page:Lange - The Blue Fairy Book.djvu/242

 master so much, even for a kingdom, or to please you, though I think you are as beautiful as the sun.’

At last they reached the King’s great city, and he came out to meet the Princess, bringing magnificent presents, and the marriage was celebrated with great rejoicings. But Goldilocks was so fond of Charming that she could not be happy unless he was near her, and she was always singing his praises.

‘If it hadn’t been for Charming,’ she said to the King, ‘I should never have come here; you ought to be very much obliged to him, for he did the most impossible things and got me water from the Fountain of Beauty, so I can never grow old, and shall get prettier every year.’

Then Charming’s enemies said to the King:

‘It is a wonder that you are not jealous, the Queen thinks there is nobody in the world like Charming. As if anybody you had sent could not have done just as much!’

‘It is quite true, now I come to think of it,’ said the King. ‘Let him be chained hand and foot, and thrown into the tower.’

So they took Charming, and as a reward for having served the King so faithfully he was shut up in the tower, where he only saw the gaoler, who brought him a piece of black bread and a pitcher of water every day.

However, little Frisk came to console him, and told him all the news.

When Pretty Goldilocks heard what had happened she threw herself at the King’s feet and begged him to set Charming free, but the more she cried the more angry he was, and at last she saw that it was useless to say any more; but it made her very sad. Then the King took it in his head that perhaps he was not handsome enough to please the Princess Goldilocks, and he thought he would bathe his face with the water from the Fountain of Beauty, which was in the flask on a shelf in the Princess’s room, where she had placed it that she might see it often. Now it happened that one of the Princess’s ladies in chasing a spider had knocked the flask off the shelf and broken it, and every drop of the water had been spilt. Not knowing what to do, she had hastily swept away the pieces of crystal, and then remembered that in the King’s room she had seen a flask of exactly the same shape, also filled with sparkling water. So, without saying a word, she fetched it and stood it upon the Queen’s shelf.

Now the water in this flask was what was used in the kingdom