Page:Oswald Bastable and Others - Nesbit.djvu/276

240 The next morning the eldest lady brought the Princess's silver mirror to the King.

'The Charmed Life is in that, your Majesty,' she said. 'I saw the Princess put it in.'

And so she had, but she had not seen the Princess take it out again almost directly afterwards.

The King smashed the looking-glass, and gave orders that poor Florizel was to be drowned in the palace fishpond.

So they tied big stones to his hands and feet and threw him in. And the stones changed to corks and held him up, and he swam to land, and when they arrested him as he landed they found that on each of the corks there was a beautiful painting of Candida's face, as she saw it every morning in her mirror.

Now, the King and Queen of Bohemia, Florizel's father and mother, had gone to Margate for a fortnight's holiday.

'We will have a thorough holiday,' said the King; 'we will forget the world, and not even look at a newspaper.'

But on the third day they both got tired of forgetting the world, and each of them secretly bought a newspaper and read it on the beach, and