Page:Oswald Bastable and Others - Nesbit.djvu/423

Rh 'Lawks!' said the dairymaid.

'Don't you love me like this?' said Muscadel.

'Not a bit,' said she; 'go along, do! You've got a face as long as a fiddle, and I never could abide black hair.' 'I'm going to stay like this,' said he.

'Then what's to become of me?' she asked, and waited for an answer with her mouth half open.

'I'll tell you,' said Muscadel. 'You can stay as you are all your life, and go on loving an archer who isn't anywhere at all, or I'll lend you the magic jewel, and then you can change back into the Princess. And when you're the Princess, you'll love me ever so much more than you ever loved the archer.'

'Humph!' said the dairymaid, fingering the Princess's pearl necklace. 'Well, if my dear archer really isn't any more, anywhere As you say, the really important thing is to love someone.' Although she was a silly dairymaid she had the sense to see that. 'Give me the jewel,' she said.

He threw it up, and she caught it overhand, put it on, and said:

'I wish I was the Princess again.'