Page:The sleeping beauty (IA sleepingbeauty00evanrich).pdf/106

 The young squire who was going hawking fitted his falcon’s hood and mounted his steed; the page-boy with the hound went off to his master. On the topmost tower of the castle the royal standard, which had been drooping against the flagstaff, filled out and waved freely in the breeze.

The hedge which had grown up to surround the enchanted castle broke in and disappeared ; peacocks squalled and strutted on the lawns, martins flitted to and from their nests under the eaves, pigs began to grunt, oxen to low, sheep to bleat, rooks to caw and children to laugh and sing. In short, all the sounds which we hear every day and all the time and never notice, began again and seemed so loud in contrast to the deadly silence that they almost cracked the ears.

And in every room in the castle the people who had been lying asleep for a hundred years woke up and went on with what they had been doing just as though nothing had happened. In the kitchen the flames of the fire leapt up with a hiss and a roar. The kettle began to boil, the stew-pot to bubble, and the meat before the fire to steam and hiss as the little boy turned the spit.

“Take that,” cried the cook, giving the scullion the clout she had promised a hundred years before. “Take that for a lazy knave.”

“Goodness,”” yawned the maid who had been plucking the black hen; “I wonder what made me drop off to sleep like that? Well, well, it’s to be hoped the cook didn’t see me!” And my word, how she made the feathers fly!

Miaou! cried the cat in disgust as he made a pounce at the mouse-hole he had been watching, for the little mouse