Page:The art of story-telling, with nearly half a hundred stories, y Julia Darrow Cowles .. (IA artofstorytellin00cowl).pdf/227

 summoned a hair-dresser, of great skill in his trade, and when the hair-dresser had finished his task, King Midas was ready to go forth among his people again, for his ears were quite hidden from sight under the ample folds of his head-dress.

Only the hair-dresser knew his secret, and he had promised never to tell it to a living being.

But as the days went by, the secret began to burn in the hair-dresser's mind, and it was with the greatest difficulty that he kept from repeating it. At last he could keep still no longer, yet he dared not disobey the King and break his promise. So he went into a vacant field and dug a deep hole in the ground. Then, kneeling down, he breathed into the hole these words: "King Midas has the ears of an ass; King Midas has the ears of an ass."

Rising, he covered the hole with earth and hastened away.

But what do you suppose happened?

The next spring the field produced a great crop of rushes, and when the rushes had grown quite tall a wind passed over them, and the rushes murmured, "King Midas has