Page:The sleeping beauty (IA sleepingbeauty00evanrich).pdf/60



HE little Princess Briar-Rose, of course, knew nothing of the strange events that had happened at the feast of her christening, and the King gave orders that nobody should even mention the subject to her. It is not a pleasant thing to know that the fairies have decreed that one shall fall asleep for a hundred years on one’s fifteenth birthday, even though one is to be awakened by a handsome Prince at the end of that time. So all the lords-in-waiting and the ladies-in-waiting had to be very careful and discreet. If they told the Princess a story, they had to keep the word “spinning” out of it; and if they showed her a book they had to take pains to see it did not contain a picture of a spinning-wheel, or any reference to a distaff or spindle, lest she should ask what they were. The King’s Customs officers, on the boundaries of the kingdom, had to examine every waggon-load of merchandise that came into the country for fear it should contain a spinning-wheel; and if anybody was found trying to smuggle one in he was brought before the judges and punished.

By these devices the King felt certain that he had averted the fate laid upon his daughter.

But the promises of the other wise women were fulfilled to the letter, for the young Princess grew up to be the most beautiful, gifted and gracious maiden in all the world. That, at any rate, was what everybody in the palace said,