Page:Oswald Bastable and Others - Nesbit.djvu/391

Rh 'How lovely!' cried the Princess, jumping up; 'won't you come too, daddy?'

'I'd rather not, dear,' said the King, so sadly that Pandora at once said:

'Well, then, I won't either. I'll stay with you.'

But the King said 'No,' and she had better take a housemaid or two with brooms and dusters. 'The dust grows thick in twenty-one years,' said he.

But the Princess didn't want any of the palace housemaids to help her to explore her mother's rooms. She went alone, holding up her cloth-of-silver train because of the dust.

And the rooms that she unlocked with the six gold keys with pearls in their handles were very dusty indeed. The windows were yellow with dust, so the Princess threw them all open. And then, even through the dust, she could see how beautiful the rooms were—far more beautiful even than her own—and everyone had always said that hers were the most beautiful rooms in the seven kingdoms. She dusted the tops of a few of the tables and Cabinets with her lace handkerchief, so that she could just see how everything was inlaid with ivory and jade and ebony and precious stones.

Six of the keys—the pearly ones—opened six