Page:Tales of old Lusitania.djvu/194

178 Several years had passed, and the toad had grown to a good size, but the girl still nursed and washed him as if he were a mere child. The prince had beautiful sparkling eyes, and could speak; and the girl often wondered how that could be if he were nothing but a toad, and she would say to herself, "His eyes and speech are not those of a toad."

When the prince had grown to his full size, the girl dreamt one night that the prince, though bearing the outward shape of a toad, was really a man, but that on account of the sinful prayer of his mother he had been changed into a toad; and in her dream she was advised to take the prince for her husband, and all would turn out happily—that on the first night of their wedded life, on retiring to rest, she was to wear seven petticoats, because the prince had seven skins upon him, and that when the prince told her to take them off, she was to insist on his removing one of his skins for every petticoat that she pulled off.

Everything happened as she had dreamt. She married the toad, and the first night they were together, when the prince told her to divest herself of her petticoats she insisted on his removing the seven skins that covered him, and when the last skin was off he was changed before her eyes into a handsome and elegant prince. The girl was nearly wild with delight, and she fell on her husband's neck and kissed him. But in the morning the prince put