Page:The sleeping beauty and other fairy tales from the old French (1910).djvu/54

Blue Beard began to find their host's beard not so blue after all.

She confided this to her mother. 'Dear mother,' she said, 'it is doubtless nothing more than my fancy, but his beard does seem to me to have altered in colour during the last ten days—a very little, of course.'

'Then you, too, have observed it!' the lady interrupted delightedly. 'My dearest child, you cannot imagine how your words relieve me! For a week past I have accused my eyesight of failing me, and myself of growing old.'

'Then you really think there is a change?' asked Fatima, at once doubtful and hoping.

'Indeed, yes. Ask yourself if it be reasonable to suppose that our eyes are playing a trick on both of us? Not,' her mother went on, 'that I, for my part, have any prejudice against blue. On the contrary, it is a beautiful colour, and considered lucky. The poets—you will have remarked—when they would figure to us the highest attainable happiness, select a blue flower or a blue bird for its emblem. Heaven itself is blue; and, at the least, a blue beard must be allowed to confer distinction.' 30