A few moments later the witch-queen had disappeared, and in her place
stood the likeness of a pretty young girl dressed in a simple white gown
with pink ribbons at the shoulders and a pink sash around her waist. Her
light-brown hair was gathered into two long braids that hung down her
back, and she had two big blue eyes that looked very innocent and sweet.
Besides these changes, both the nose and the mouth of the girl differed
in shape from those of Zixi; so that no one would have seen the
slightest resemblance between the two people, or between Miss Trust and
the girl who stood in the lilac-grove.
The transformed witch-queen gave a sweet, rippling laugh, and glanced at
her reflection in the still waters of the spring. And then the girlish
face frowned, for the image glaring up at her was that of a wrinkled,
toothless old hag.
“I really must have that cloak,” sighed the girl; and then she turned
and walked out of the lilac-grove and down the mountain-side toward the
city of Nole.
The Princess Fluff was playing tennis with her maids in a courtyard of
the royal palace, when Jikki came to say that a girl wished to speak
with her Highness.
“Send her here,” said Fluff.
So the witch-queen came to her, in the guise of the fair young girl; and
bowing in a humble manner before the princess, she said: “Please, your
Highness, may I be one of your maids?”
“Why, I have eight already!” answered Fluff, laughing.
“But my father and mother are both dead; and I have come all the way
from my castle to beg you to let me wait upon you,” said the girl,
looking at the little princess with a pleading expression in her blue
eyes.
“Who are you?” asked Fluff.
“I am daughter of the Lord Hurrydole, and my name is Adlena,” replied
the girl, which was not altogether a falsehood, because one of her
ancestors had borne the name Hurrydole, and Adlena was one of her own
names.
“Then, Adlena,” said Fluff, brightly, “you shall certainly be one of my
maids; for there is plenty of room in the palace, and the more girls I
have around me the happier I shall be.”
So Queen Zixi, under the name of Adlena, became an inmate of the king’s
palace; and it was not many days before she learned where the magic
cloak was kept. For the princess gave her a key to a drawer and told her
to get from it a blue silk scarf she wished to wear, and directly under
the scarf lay the fairy garment.
Adlena would have seized it at that moment had she dared; but Fluff was
in the same room, so she only said: “Please, princess, may I look at
that pretty cloak?”
“Of course,” answered Fluff; “but handle it carefully, for it was given
me by the fairies.”
So Adlena unfolded the cloak and looked at it very carefully, noting
exactly the manner in which it was woven. Then she folded it again,
arranged it in the drawer, and turned the key, which the princess
immediately attached to a chain which she always wore around her neck.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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