'I'll tell you,' said Muscadel. 'You can stay as you are all your life, and go on loving an archer who isn't anywhere at all, or I'll lend you the magic jewel, and then you can change back into the Princess. And when you're the Princess, you'll love me ever so much more than you ever loved the archer.' 'Humph!' said the dairymaid, fingering the Princess's pearl necklace. 'Well, if my dear archer really isn't any more, anywhere---- As you say, the really important thing is to love someone.' Although she was a silly dairymaid she had the sense to see that. 'Give me the jewel,' she said. He threw it up, and she caught it overhand, put it on, and said: 'I wish I was the Princess again.' And there was the Princess leaning out of the window and covering her face with her hands. 'Look at me,' said Muscadel; 'am I the sort of person you could love?' 'I don't know,' said Pandora, peeping at him between her rosy finger-tips. 'You had better ask papa.' 'I'd rather ask you,' said Muscadel, as he climbed up the palace ivy and leaned in at her window-sill to ask her. And she leaned out to answer him. * * * * * They were married the very next day, and everyone in the kingdom, rich and poor, had roast beef and plum-pudding for dinner. And as soon as the wedding was over, Muscadel and his bride went down to the lake, and he threw the magic jewel far, far out. It gleamed redly as it flew through the sunlit air and with a tiny splash sank in the lake, and there it is to this day. You might try to find it one of these days when you have nothing better to do. I dare say you often feel that you would like to change from what you are into something else, and, for anything I know, it might be a very good thing for you, and for the rest of the world. But Pandora and Muscadel were so happy at belonging to each other that they never wished to change at all, so they did not want the magic ring, and that is why they threw it away. For, as all good housekeepers know, it is very foolish to keep useless things about--just to litter the house up. THE END PHOTOGRAPHED AND PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY BUTLER AND TANNER LIMITED FROME AND LONDON End of Project Gutenberg's Oswald Bastable and Others, by Edith Nesbit