Page:Nine Unlikely Tales.djvu/44

36 and red over the Palace roof, something came creeping, creeping, pussily, mousily out of the Palace; and it looked like a yard and a half of white tape creeping along; and it was the Princess herself.

She came quietly up to the cage, and squeezed herself between the bars; they were very narrow bars, but a yard and a half of white tape can go through the bars of any birdcage I ever saw. And the Princess went up to the Cockatoucan and tickled him under his wings till he laughed aloud. Then, quick as thought, the Princess squeezed through the bars, and was back in her room before the bird had finished laughing. Matilda went back to bed. Next day all the sparrows had turned into cart horses, and the roads were impassable.

That day when she went, as usual, to play with the Princess, Matilda said to her suddenly, “Princess, what makes you so thin?”

The Princess caught Matilda’s hand and pressed it with warmth.

“Matilda,” she said simply, “you have a noble heart. No one else has ever asked me that, though they tried to cure it. And I couldn’t answer till I was asked, could I?