By this ingenious method, without disputes or complications, the eight cups received each its ball, and when the game was over Vera took her ball, Dorothea hers, Simonetta hers, and so on, until each girl had her ball. They then all embraced, and twining their arms about each other began to go back along the road down which they had arrived. When they passed by Smaly, who was still standing at the door of the kitchen, he demanded: "But who won?" The young girls were quite unable to understand what this question meant. They smiled divinely at him with their delicately curved mouths, then each one showed him her ball made of pearly sugar. CHAPTER XII The Mother of the Crow tells of the life and death of Djorak in his own country. All this time Smaly and Redy had remained in the great kitchen. Suddenly they heard a voice say: "It's confoundedly cold in this disgusting kitchen." "Hullo, who is that?" asked Smaly and Redy together. "It's I," replied the Mother of the Crow. Peering about them they discovered her where she had been left forgotten under the table, still sitting in her oyster-shell. "I'm cold," she said again. "What can we do for you?" exclaimed Redy pityingly. "Yes, how can we help?" asked Smaly. "Take me back to my tree of coral." "They won't let us go out of here," exclaimed Redy and Smaly. "Then put the Tea-Cosy over me," suggested the poor old Mother of the Crow, whose teeth were chattering in her beak. And so it was done. There was no longer anything to see but a Tea-Cosy. The Mother of the Crow was completely hidden. "Now I'm nice and warm," said the Mother of the Crow. It was really quite a new experience for Smaly and Redy to hold a conversation with a Tea-Cosy. The Mother of the Crow was a great chatterbox, and she knew a thing or two, and several things more after that. "What are you doing here?" asked the Tea-Cosy. Redy and Smaly folded their hands, and began: We wish to have three girls, Fine, sweet---- "I know, I know," interrupted the Tea-Cosy, "but I meant what are you doing here in the great kitchen?" "We're waiting for the sun to go down," was the response. "And you can't leave till then," replied the Tea-Cosy. "Then tell me a story, a nice long story. I love long stories," added the Tea-Cosy with enthusiasm. [Illustration: TEA-COSY] "Are you equally fond of telling long stories?" asked Redy and Smaly, both seized with the same idea. "I like it even better than gooseberry-fool and candy-sugar caterpillars," replied the Tea-Cosy in a voice that trembled with excitement. [Illustration: KISIKA IN HER SEDAN-CHAIR _Page 165_] [Illustration: "WE'RE WAITING FOR THE SUN TO GO DOWN"] "Then," said Smaly, "tell us the whole history of the Prisoner."