But her sneakish qualities, if they really existed, were generally hidden, and she was very clever at thinking of new games, and very kind if you got into a row over anything.

George was eight and stout. He was not a sneak, but concealment was foreign to his nature, so he never could keep a secret unless he forgot it. Which fortunately happened quite often.

The uncle very amiably lent Kenneth his fishing-rod, and provided real bait in the most thoughtful and generous manner. And the four children fished all the morning and all the afternoon. Conrad caught two roach and an eel. George caught nothing, and nothing was what the other two caught. But it was glorious sport. And the next day there was to be a picnic. Life to Kenneth seemed full of new and delicious excitement.

In the evening the aunt and the uncle went out to dinner, and Ethel, in her grown-up way, went with them, very grand in a blue silk dress and turquoises. So the children were left to themselves.

You know the empty hush which settles down on a house when the grown-ups have gone out to dinner and you have the whole evening to do what you like in. The children stood in the hall a moment after the carriage wheels had died away with the scrunching swish that the carriage wheels always made as they turned the corner by the lodge, where the gravel was extra thick and soft owing to the droppings from the trees. From the kitchen came the voices of the servants, laughing and talking.

'It's two hours at least to bedtime,' said Alison. 'What shall we do?' Alison always began by saying 'What shall we do?' and always ended by deciding what should be done. 'You all say what you think,' she went on, 'and then we'll vote about it. You first, Ken, because you're the visitor.'

'Fishing,' said Kenneth, because it was the only thing he could think of.

'Make toffee,' said Conrad.

'Build a great big house with all the bricks,' said George.

'We can't make toffee,' Alison explained gently but firmly, 'because you know what the pan was like last time, and cook said, "never again, not much." And it's no good building houses, Georgie, when you could be out of doors. And fishing's simply rotten when we've been at it all day. I've thought of something.'

So of course all the others said, 'What?'

'We'll have a pageant, a river pageant, on the moat. We'll all dress up and hang Chinese lanterns in the trees. I'll be the Sunflower lady that the Troubadour came all across the sea, because he loved her so, for, and one of you can be the Troubadour, and the others can be sailors or anything you like.'

'I shall be the Troubadour,' said Conrad with decision.

'I think you ought to let Kenneth because he's the visitor,' said George, who would have liked to be it immensely himself, or anyhow did not see why Conrad should be a troubadour if he couldn't.

Conrad said what manners required, which was:

'Oh! all right, I don't care about being the beastly Troubadour.'

'You might be the Princess's brother,' Alison suggested.

'Not me,' said Conrad scornfully, 'I'll be the captain of the ship.'

'In a turban the brother would be, with the Benares cloak, and the Persian dagger out of the cabinet in the drawing-room,' Alison went on unmoved.

'I'll be that,' said George.

'No, you won't, I shall, so there,' said Conrad. 'You can be the captain of the ship.'

(But in the end both boys were captains, because that meant being on the boat, whereas being the Princess's brother, however turbanned, only meant standing on the bank. And there is no rule to prevent captains wearing turbans and Persian daggers, except in the Navy where, of course, it is not done.)

So then they all tore up to the attic where the dressing-up trunk was, and pulled out all the dressing-up things on to the floor. And all the time they were dressing, Alison was telling the others what they were to say and do. The Princess wore a white satin skirt and a red flannel blouse and a veil formed of several motor scarves of various colours. Also a wreath of pink roses off one of Ethel's old hats, and a pair of pink satin slippers with sparkly buckles.

Kenneth wore a blue silk dressing-jacket and a yellow sash, a lace collar, and a towel turban. And the others divided between them an eastern dressing-gown, once the property of their grandfather, a black spangled scarf, very holey, a pair of red and white football stockings, a Chinese coat, and two old muslin curtains, which, rolled up, made turbans of enormous size and fierceness.

On the landing outside cousin Ethel's open door Alison paused and said, 'I say!'

'Oh! come on,' said Conrad, 'we haven't fixed the Chinese lanterns yet, and it's getting dark.'

'You go on,' said Alison, 'I've just thought of something.'

The children were allowed to play in the boat so long as they didn't loose it from its moorings. The painter was extremely long, and quite the effect of coming home from a long voyage was produced when the three boys pushed the boat out as far as it would go among the boughs of the beech-tree which overhung the water, and then reappeared in the circle of red and yellow light thrown by the Chinese lanterns.

'What ho! ashore there!' shouted the captain.

'What ho!' said a voice from the shore which, Alison explained, was disguised.

'We be three poor mariners,' said Conrad by a happy effort of memory, 'just newly come to shore. We seek news of the Princess of Tripoli.'

'She's in her palace,' said the disguised voice, 'wait a minute, and I'll tell her you're here. But what do you want her for? ("A poor minstrel of France") go on, Con.'

'A poor minstrel of France,' said Conrad, '(all right! I remember,) who has heard of the Princess's beauty has come to lay, to lay——'

'His heart,' said Alison.



'All right, I know. His heart at her something or other feet.'

'Pretty feet,' said Alison. 'I go to tell the Princess.'

Next moment from the shadows on the bank a radiant vision stepped into the circle of light, crying—

'Oh! Rudel, is it indeed thou? Thou art come at last. O welcome to the arms of the Princess!'

'What do I do now?' whispered Rudel (who was Kenneth) in the boat, and at the same moment Conrad and George said, as with one voice—

'My hat! Alison, won't you catch it!'

For at the end of the Princess's speech she had thrown back her veils and revealed a blaze of splendour. She wore several necklaces, one of seed pearls, one of topazes, and one of Australian shells, besides a string of amber and one of coral. And the front of the red flannel blouse was studded with brooches, in one at least of which diamonds gleamed. Each arm had one or two bracelets and on her clenched hands glittered as many rings as any Princess could wish to wear.

So her brothers had some excuse for saying, 'You'll catch it.'

'No, I sha'n't. It's my look out, anyhow. Do shut up,' said the Princess, stamping her foot. 'Now then, Ken, go ahead. Ken, you say, "Oh Lady, I faint with rapture!"'

'I faint with rapture,' said Kenneth stolidly. 'Now I land, don't I?'

He landed and stared at the jewelled hand the Princess held out.

'At last, at last,' she said, 'but you ought to say that, Ken. I say, I think I'd better be an eloping Princess, and then I can come in the boat. Rudel dies really, but that's so dull. Lead me to your ship, oh noble stranger! for you have won the Princess, and with you I will live and die. Give me your hand, can't you, silly, and do mind my train.'

So Kenneth led her to the boat, and with some difficulty, for the satin train got between her feet, she managed to flounder into the punt.

'Now you stand and bow,' she said. 'Fair Rudel, with this ring I thee wed,' she pressed a large amethyst ring into his hand, 'remember that the Princess of Tripoli is yours for ever. Now let's sing Integer Vitae because it's Latin.'

So they sat in the boat and sang. And presently the servants came out to listen and admire, and at the sound of the servants' approach the Princess veiled her shining splendour.

'It's prettier than wot the Coventry pageant was, so it is,' said the cook, 'but it's long past your bed times. So come on out of that there dangerous boat, there's dears.'

So then the children went to bed. And when the house was quiet again, Alison slipped down and put back Ethel's jewelry, fitting the things into their cases and boxes as correctly as she could. 'Ethel won't notice,' she thought, but of course Ethel did.

So that next day each child was asked separately by Ethel's mother who had been playing with Ethel's jewelry. And Conrad and George said they would rather not say. This was a form they always used in that family when that sort of question was asked, and it meant, 'It wasn't me, and I don't want to sneak.'

And when it came to Alison's turn, she found to her surprise and horror that instead of saying, 'I played with them,' she had said, 'I would rather not say.'

Of course the mother thought that it was Kenneth who had had the jewels to play with. So when it came to his turn he was not asked the same question as the others, but his aunt said:

'Kenneth, you are a very naughty little boy to take your cousin Ethel's jewelry to play with.'

'I didn't,' said Kenneth.

'Hush! hush!' said the aunt, 'do not make your fault worse by untruthfulness. And what have you done with the amethyst ring?'

Kenneth was just going to say that he had given it back to Alison, when he saw that this would be sneakish. So he said, getting hot to the ears, 'You don't suppose I've stolen your beastly ring, do you, Auntie?'

'Don't you dare to speak to me like that,' the aunt very naturally replied. 'No, Kenneth, I do not think you would steal, but the ring is missing and it must be found.'

Kenneth was furious and frightened. He stood looking down and kicking the leg of the chair.

'You had better look for it. You will have plenty of time, because I shall not allow you to go to the picnic with the others. The mere taking of the jewelry was wrong, but if you had owned your fault and asked Ethel's pardon, I should have overlooked it. But you have told me an untruth and you have lost the ring. You are a very wicked child, and it will make your dear mother very unhappy when she hears of it. That her boy should be a liar. It is worse than being a thief!'

At this Kenneth's fortitude gave way, and he lost his head. 'Oh, don't,' he said, 'I didn't. I didn't. I didn't. Oh! don't tell mother I'm a thief and a liar. Oh! Aunt Effie, please, please don't.' And with that he began to cry.

Any doubts Aunt Effie might have had were settled by this outbreak. It was now quite plain to her that Kenneth had really intended to keep the ring.

'You will remain in your room till the picnic party has started,' the aunt went on, 'and then you must find the ring. Remember I expect it to be found when I return. And I hope you will be in a better frame of mind and really sorry for having been so wicked.'

'Mayn't I see Alison?' was all he found to say.

And the answer was, 'Certainly not. I cannot allow you to associate with your cousins. You are not fit to be with honest, truthful children.'

So they all went to the picnic, and Kenneth was left alone. When they had gone he crept down and wandered furtively through the empty rooms, ashamed to face the servants, and feeling almost as wicked as though he had really done something wrong. He thought about it all, over and over again, and the more he thought the more certain he was that he had handed back the ring to Alison last night when the voices of the servants were first heard from the dark lawn.

But what was the use of saying so? No one would believe him, and it would be sneaking anyhow. Besides, perhaps he hadn't handed it back to her. Or rather, perhaps he had handed it and she hadn't taken it. Perhaps it had slipped into the boat. He would go and see.

But he did not find it in the boat, though he turned up the carpet and even took up the boards to look. And then an extremely miserable little boy began to search for an amethyst ring in all sorts of impossible places, indoors and out. You know the hopeless way in which you look for things that you know perfectly well you will never find, the borrowed penknife that you dropped in the woods, for instance, or the week's pocket-money which slipped through that hole in your pocket as you went to the village to spend it.

The servants gave him his meals and told him to cheer up. But cheering up and Kenneth were, for the time, strangers. People in books never can eat when they are in trouble, but I have noticed myself that if the trouble has gone on for some hours, eating is really rather a comfort. You don't enjoy eating so much as usual, perhaps, but at any rate it is something to do, and takes the edge off your sorrow for a short time. And cook was sorry for Kenneth and sent him up a very nice dinner and a very nice tea. Roast chicken and gooseberry pie the dinner was, and for tea there was cake with almond icing on it.

The sun was very low when he went back wearily to have one more look in the boat for that detestable amethyst ring. Of course it was not there. And the picnic party would be home soon. And he really did not know what his aunt would do to him.

'Shut me up in a dark cupboard, perhaps,' he thought gloomily, 'or put me to bed all day to-morrow. Or give me lines to write out, thousands, and thousands, and thousands, and thousands, and thousands, of them.'

The boat, set in motion by his stepping into it, swung out to the full length of its rope. The sun was shining almost level across the water. It was a very still evening, and the reflections of the trees and of the house were as distinct as the house and the trees themselves. And the water was unusually clear. He could see the fish swimming about, and the sand and pebbles at the bottom of the moat. How clear and quiet it looked down there, and what fun the fishes seemed to be having.

'I wish I was a fish,' said Kenneth. 'Nobody punishes them for taking rings they didn't take.'

And then suddenly he saw the ring itself, lying calm, and quiet, and round, and shining, on the smooth sand at the bottom of the moat.

He reached for the boat-hook and leaned over the edge of the boat trying to get up the ring on the boat-hook's point. Then there was a splash.

'Good gracious! I wonder what that is?' said cook in the kitchen, and dropped the saucepan with the welsh rabbit in it which she had just made for kitchen supper.

Kenneth had leaned out too far over the edge of the boat, the boat had suddenly decided to go the other way, and Kenneth had fallen into the water.

The first thing he felt was delicious coolness, the second that his clothes had gone, and the next thing he noticed was that he was swimming quite easily and comfortably under water, and that he had no trouble with his breathing, such as people who tell you not to fall into water seem to expect you to have. Also he could see quite well, which he had never been able to do under water before.

'I can't think,' he said to himself, 'why people make so much fuss about your falling into the water. I sha'n't be in a hurry to get out. I'll swim right round the moat while I'm about it.'



It was a very much longer swim than he expected, and as he swam he noticed one or two things that struck him as rather odd. One was that he couldn't see his hands. And another was that he couldn't feel his feet. And he met some enormous fishes, like great cod or halibut, they seemed. He had had no idea that there were fresh-water fish of that size.

They towered above him more like men-o'-war than fish, and he was rather glad to get past them. There were numbers of smaller fishes, some about his own size, he thought. They seemed to be enjoying themselves extremely, and he admired the clever quickness with which they darted out of the way of the great hulking fish.

And then suddenly he ran into something hard and very solid, and a voice above him said crossly:

'Now then, who are you a-shoving of? Can't you keep your eyes open, and keep your nose out of gentlemen's shirt fronts?'

'I beg your pardon,' said Kenneth, trying to rub his nose, and not being able to. 'I didn't know people could talk under water,' he added very much astonished to find that talking under water was as easy to him as swimming there.

'Fish can talk under water, of course,' said the voice, 'if they didn't, they'd never talk at all: they certainly can't talk out of it.'

'But I'm not a fish,' said Kenneth, and felt himself grin at the absurd idea.

'Yes, you are,' said the voice, 'of course you're a fish,' and Kenneth, with a shiver of certainty, felt that the voice spoke the truth. He was a fish. He must have become a fish at the very moment when he fell into the water. That accounted for his not being able to see his hands or feel his feet. Because of course his hands were fins and his feet were a tail.

'Who are you?' he asked the voice, and his own voice trembled.

'I'm the Doyen Carp,' said the voice. 'You must be a very new fish indeed or you'd know that. Come up, and let's have a look at you.'

Kenneth came up and found himself face to face with an enormous fish who had round staring eyes and a mouth that opened and shut continually. It opened square like a kit-bag, and it shut with an extremely sour and severe expression like that of an offended rhinoceros.

'Yes,' said the Carp, 'you are a new fish. Who put you in?'

'I fell in,' said Kenneth, 'out of the boat, but I'm not a fish at all, really I'm not. I'm a boy, but I don't suppose you'll believe me.'

'Why shouldn't I believe you?' asked the Carp wagging a slow fin. 'Nobody tells untruths under water.'

And if you come to think of it, no one ever does.

'Tell me your true story,' said the Carp very lazily. And Kenneth told it.

'Ah! these humans!' said the Carp when he had done. 'Always in such a hurry to think the worst of everybody!' He opened his mouth squarely and shut it contemptuously. 'You're jolly lucky, you are. Not one boy in a million turns into a fish, let me tell you.'

'Do you mean that I've got to go on being a fish?' Kenneth asked.

'Of course you'll go on being a fish as long as you stop in the water. You couldn't live here, you know, if you weren't.'

'I might if I was an eel,' said Kenneth, and thought himself very clever.

'Well, be an eel then,' said the Carp, and swam away sneering and stately. Kenneth had to swim his hardest to catch up.

'Then if I get out of the water, shall I be a boy again?' he asked panting.

'Of course, silly,' said the Carp, 'only you can't get out.'

'Oh! can't I?' said Kenneth the fish, whisked his tail and swam off. He went straight back to the amethyst ring, picked it up in his mouth, and swam into the shallows at the edge of the moat. Then he tried to climb up the slanting mud and on to the grassy bank, but the grass hurt his fins horribly, and when he put his nose out of the water, the air stifled him, and he was glad to slip back again. Then he tried to jump out of the water, but he could only jump straight up into the air, so of course he fell straight down again into the water. He began to be afraid, and the thought that perhaps he was doomed to remain for ever a fish was indeed a terrible one. He wanted to cry, but the tears would not come out of his eyes. Perhaps there was no room for any more water in the moat.

The smaller fishes called to him in a friendly jolly way to come and play with them—they were having a quite exciting game of follow-my-leader among some enormous water-lily stalks that looked like trunks of great trees. But Kenneth had no heart for games just then.

He swam miserably round the moat looking for the old Carp, his only acquaintance in this strange wet world. And at last, pushing through a thick tangle of water weeds he found the great fish.

'Now then,' said the Carp testily, 'haven't you any better manners than to come tearing a gentleman's bed-curtains like that?'

'I beg your pardon,' said Kenneth Fish, 'but I know how clever you are. Do please help me.'

'What do you want now?' said the Carp, and spoke a little less crossly.

'I want to get out. I want to go and be a boy again.'

'But you must have said you wanted to be a fish.'

'I didn't mean it, if I did.'

'You shouldn't say what you don't mean.'

'I'll try not to again,' said Kenneth humbly, 'but how can I get out?'

'There's only one way,' said the Carp rolling his vast body over in his watery bed, 'and a jolly unpleasant way it is. Far better stay here and be a good little fish. On the honour of a gentleman that's the best thing you can do.'

'I want to get out,' said Kenneth again.

'Well then, the only way is ... you know we always teach the young fish to look out for hooks so that they may avoid them. You must look out for a hook and take it. Let them catch you. On a hook.'

The Carp shuddered and went on solemnly, 'Have you strength? Have you patience? Have you high courage and determination? You will want them all. Have you all these?'

'I don't know what I've got,' said poor Kenneth, 'except that I've got a tail and fins, and I don't know a hook when I see it. Won't you come with me? Oh! dear Mr. Doyen Carp, do come and show me a hook.'

'It will hurt you,' said the Carp, 'very much indeed. You take a gentleman's word for it.'

'I know,' said Kenneth, 'you needn't rub it in.'

The Carp rolled heavily out of his bed.

'Come on then,' he said, 'I don't admire your taste, but if you want a hook, well, the gardener's boy is fishing in the cool of the evening. Come on.'

He led the way with a steady stately movement.

'I want to take the ring with me,' said Kenneth, 'but I can't get hold of it. Do you think you could put it on my fin with your snout?'

'My what!' shouted the old Carp indignantly and stopped dead.

'Your nose, I meant,' said Kenneth. 'Oh! please don't be angry. It would be so kind of you if you would. Shove the ring on, I mean.'

'That will hurt too,' said the Carp, and Kenneth thought he seemed not altogether sorry that it should.

It did hurt very much indeed. The ring was hard and heavy, and somehow Kenneth's fin would not fold up small enough for the ring to slip over it, and the Carp's big mouth was rather clumsy at the work. But at last it was done. And then they set out in search of a hook for Kenneth to be caught with.

'I wish we could find one! I wish we could!' Kenneth Fish kept saying.

'You're just looking for trouble,' said the Carp. 'Well, here you are!'

Above them in the clear water hung a delicious-looking worm. Kenneth Boy did not like worms any better than you do, but to Kenneth Fish that worm looked most tempting and delightful.

'Just wait a sec.,' he said, 'till I get that worm.'

'You little silly,' said the Carp, 'that's the hook. Take it.'

'Wait a sec.,' said Kenneth again.

His courage was beginning to ooze out of his fin tips, and a shiver ran down him from gills to tail.

'If you once begin to think about a hook you never take it,' said the Carp.

'Never?' said Kenneth 'Then ... oh! good-bye!' he cried desperately, and snapped at the worm. A sharp pain ran through his head and he felt himself drawn up into the air, that stifling, choking, husky, thick stuff in which fish cannot breathe. And as he swung in the air the dreadful thought came to him, 'Suppose I don't turn into a boy again? Suppose I keep being a fish?' And then he wished he hadn't. But it was too late to wish that.

Everything grew quite dark, only inside his head there seemed to be a light. There was a wild, rushing, buzzing noise, then something in his head seemed to break and he knew no more.

* * * * *

When presently he knew things again, he was lying on something hard. Was he Kenneth Fish lying on a stone at the bottom of the moat, or Kenneth Boy lying somewhere out of the water? His breathing was all right, so he wasn't a fish out of water or a boy under it.

'He's coming to,' said a voice. The Carp's he thought it was. But next moment he knew it to be the voice of his aunt, and he moved his hand and felt grass in it. He opened his eyes and saw above him the soft gray of the evening sky with a star or two.

'Here's the ring, Aunt,' he said.

* * * * *



The cook had heard a splash and had run out just as the picnic party arrived at the front door. They had all rushed to the moat, and the uncle had pulled Kenneth out with the boat-hook. He had not been in the water more than three minutes, they said. But Kenneth knew better.

They carried him in, very wet he was, and laid him on the breakfast-room sofa, where the aunt with hurried thoughtfulness had spread out the uncle's mackintosh.

'Get some rough towels, Jane,' said the aunt. 'Make haste, do.'

'I got the ring,' said Kenneth.

'Never mind about the ring, dear,' said the aunt, taking his boots off.

'But you said I was a thief and a liar,' Kenneth said feebly, 'and it was in the moat all the time.'

'Mother!' it was Alison who shrieked. 'You didn't say that to him?'

'Of course I didn't,' said the aunt impatiently. She thought she hadn't, but then Kenneth thought she had.

'It was me took the ring,' said Alison, 'and I dropped it. I didn't say I hadn't. I only said I'd rather not say. Oh Mother! poor Kenneth!'

The aunt, without a word, carried Kenneth up to the bath-room and turned on the hot-water tap. The uncle and Ethel followed.

'Why didn't you own up, you sneak?' said Conrad to his sister with withering scorn.

'Sneak,' echoed the stout George.

'I meant to. I was only getting steam up,' sobbed Alison. 'I didn't know. Mother only told us she wasn't pleased with Ken, and so he wasn't to go to the picnic. Oh! what shall I do? What shall I do?'

'Sneak!' said her brothers in chorus, and left her to her tears of shame and remorse.

It was Kenneth who next day begged every one to forgive and forget. And as it was his day—rather like a birthday, you know—when no one could refuse him anything, all agreed that the whole affair should be buried in oblivion. Every one was tremendously kind, the aunt more so than any one. But Alison's eyes were still red when in the afternoon they all went fishing once more. And before Kenneth's hook had been two minutes in the water there was a bite, a very big fish, the uncle had to be called from his study to land it.

'Here's a magnificent fellow,' said the uncle. 'Not an ounce less than two pounds, Ken. I'll have it stuffed for you.'

And he held out the fish and Kenneth found himself face to face with the Doyen Carp. There was no mistaking that mouth that opened like a kit-bag, and shut in a sneer like a rhinoceros's. Its eye was most reproachful.

'Oh! no,' cried Kenneth, 'you helped me back and I'll help you back,' and he caught the Carp from the hands of the uncle and flung it out in the moat.

'Your head's not quite right yet, my boy,' said the uncle kindly. 'Hadn't you better go in and lie down a bit?'

But Alison understood, for he had told her the whole story. He had told her that morning before breakfast while she was still in deep disgrace; to cheer her up, he said. And, most disappointingly, it made her cry more than ever.

'Your poor little fins,' she had said, 'and having your feet tied up in your tail. And it was all my fault.'

'I liked it,' Kenneth had said with earnest politeness, 'it was a most awful lark.' And he quite meant what he said.



XII

THE MAGICIAN'S HEART

We all have our weaknesses. Mine is mulberries. Yours, perhaps, motor cars. Professor Taykin's was christenings—royal christenings. He always expected to be asked to the christening parties of all the little royal babies, and of course he never was, because he was not a lord, or a duke, or a seller of bacon and tea, or anything really high-class, but merely a wicked magician, who by economy and strict attention to customers had worked up a very good business of his own. He had not always been wicked. He was born quite good, I believe, and his old nurse, who had long since married a farmer and retired into the calm of country life, always used to say that he was the duckiest little boy in a plaid frock with the dearest little fat legs. But he had changed since he was a boy, as a good many other people do—perhaps it was his trade. I dare say you've noticed that cobblers are usually thin, and brewers are generally fat, and magicians are almost always wicked.

Well, his weakness (for christenings) grew stronger and stronger because it was never indulged, and at last he 'took the bull into his own hands,' as the Irish footman at the palace said, and went to a christening without being asked. It was a very grand party given by the King of the Fortunate Islands, and the little prince was christened Fortunatus. No one took any notice of Professor Taykin. They were too polite to turn him out, but they made him wish he'd never come. He felt quite an outsider, as indeed he was, and this made him furious. So that when all the bright, light, laughing, fairy godmothers were crowding round the blue satin cradle, and giving gifts of beauty and strength and goodness to the baby, the Magician suddenly did a very difficult charm (in his head, like you do mental arithmetic), and said:

'Young Forty may be all that, but I say he shall be the stupidest prince in the world,' and on that he vanished in a puff of red smoke with a smell like the Fifth of November in a back garden on Streatham Hill, and as he left no address the King of the Fortunate Islands couldn't prosecute him for high treason.

Taykin was very glad to think that he had made such a lot of people unhappy—the whole Court was in tears when he left, including the baby—and he looked in the papers for another royal christening, so that he could go to that and make a lot more people miserable. And there was one fixed for the very next Wednesday. The Magician went to that, too, disguised as a wealthy.

This time the baby was a girl. Taykin kept close to the pink velvet cradle, and when all the nice qualities in the world had been given to the Princess he suddenly said, 'Little Aura may be all that, but I say she shall be the ugliest princess in all the world.'

And instantly she was. It was terrible. And she had been such a beautiful baby too. Every one had been saying that she was the most beautiful baby they had ever seen. This sort of thing is often said at christenings.

Having uglified the unfortunate little Princess the Magician did the spell (in his mind, just as you do your spelling) to make himself vanish, but to his horror there was no red smoke and no smell of fireworks, and there he was, still, where he now very much wished not to be. Because one of the fairies there had seen, just one second too late to save the Princess, what he was up to, and had made a strong little charm in a great hurry to prevent his vanishing. This Fairy was a White Witch, and of course you know that White Magic is much stronger than Black Magic, as well as more suited for drawing-room performances. So there the Magician stood, 'looking like a thunder-struck pig,' as some one unkindly said, and the dear White Witch bent down and kissed the baby princess.

'There!' she said, 'you can keep that kiss till you want it. When the time comes you'll know what to do with it. The Magician can't vanish, Sire. You'd better arrest him.'

'Arrest that person,' said the King, pointing to Taykin. 'I suppose your charms are of a permanent nature, madam.'

'Quite,' said the Fairy, 'at least they never go till there's no longer any use for them.'

So the Magician was shut up in an enormously high tower, and allowed to play with magic; but none of his spells could act outside the tower so he was never able to pass the extra double guard that watched outside night and day. The King would have liked to have the Magician executed but the White Witch warned him that this would never do.

'Don't you see,' she said, 'he's the only person who can make the Princess beautiful again. And he'll do it some day. But don't you go asking him to do it. He'll never do anything to oblige you. He's that sort of man.'

So the years rolled on. The Magician stayed in the tower and did magic and was very bored,—for it is dull to take white rabbits out of your hat, and your hat out of nothing when there's no one to see you.

Prince Fortunatus was such a stupid little boy that he got lost quite early in the story, and went about the country saying his name was James, which it wasn't. A baker's wife found him and adopted him, and sold the diamond buttons of his little overcoat, for three hundred pounds, and as she was a very honest woman she put two hundred away for James to have when he grew up.

The years rolled on. Aura continued to be hideous, and she was very unhappy, till on her twentieth birthday her married cousin Belinda came to see her. Now Belinda had been made ugly in her cradle too, so she could sympathise as no one else could.

'But I got out of it all right, and so will you,' said Belinda. 'I'm sure the first thing to do is to find a magician.'

'Father banished them all twenty years ago,' said Aura behind her veil, 'all but the one who uglified me.'

'Then I should go to him,' said beautiful Belinda. 'Dress up as a beggar maid, and give him fifty pounds to do it. Not more, or he may suspect that you're not a beggar maid. It will be great fun. I'd go with you only I promised Bellamant faithfully that I'd be home to lunch.' And off she went in her mother-of-pearl coach, leaving Aura to look through the bound volumes of The Perfect Lady in the palace library, to find out the proper costume for a beggar maid.

Now that very morning the Magician's old nurse had packed up a ham, and some eggs, and some honey, and some apples, and a sweet bunch of old-fashioned flowers, and borrowed the baker's boy to hold the horse for her, and started off to see the Magician. It was forty years since she'd seen him, but she loved him still, and now she thought she could do him a good turn. She asked in the town for his address, and learned that he lived in the Black Tower.

'But you'd best be careful,' the townsfolk said, 'he's a spiteful chap.'

'Bless you,' said the old nurse, 'he won't hurt me as nursed him when he was a babe, in a plaid frock with the dearest little fat legs ever you see.'

So she got to the tower, and the guards let her through. Taykin was almost pleased to see her—remember he had had no visitors for twenty years—and he was quite pleased to see the ham and the honey.

'But where did I put them heggs?' said the nurse, 'and the apples—I must have left them at home after all.'

She had. But the Magician just waved his hand in the air, and there was a basket of apples that hadn't been there before. The eggs he took out of her bonnet, the folds of her shawl, and even from his own mouth, just like a conjurer does. Only of course he was a real Magician.

'Lor!' said she, 'it's like magic.'

'It is magic,' said he. 'That's my trade. It's quite a pleasure to have an audience again. I've lived here alone for twenty years. It's very lonely, especially of an evening.'

'Can't you get out?' said the nurse.

'No. King's orders must be respected, but it's a dog's life.' He sniffed, made himself a magic handkerchief out of empty air, and wiped his eyes.

'Take an apprentice, my dear,' said the nurse.

'And teach him my magic? Not me.'

'Suppose you got one so stupid he couldn't learn?'

'That would be all right—but it's no use advertising for a stupid person—you'd get no answers.'

'You needn't advertise,' said the nurse; and she went out and brought in James, who was really the Prince of the Fortunate Islands, and also the baker's boy she had brought with her to hold the horse's head.

'Now, James,' she said, 'you'd like to be apprenticed, wouldn't you?'

'Yes,' said the poor stupid boy.

'Then give the gentleman your money, James.'

James did.

'My last doubts vanish,' said the Magician, 'he is stupid. Nurse, let us celebrate the occasion with a little drop of something. Not before the boy because of setting an example. James, wash up. Not here, silly; in the back kitchen.'

So James washed up, and as he was very clumsy he happened to break a little bottle of essence of dreams that was on the shelf, and instantly there floated up from the washing-up water the vision of a princess more beautiful than the day—so beautiful that even James could not help seeing how beautiful she was, and holding out his arms to her as she came floating through the air above the kitchen sink. But when he held out his arms she vanished. He sighed and washed up harder than ever.

'I wish I wasn't so stupid,' he said, and then there was a knock at the door. James wiped his hands and opened. Some one stood there in very picturesque rags and tatters. 'Please,' said some one, who was of course the Princess, 'is Professor Taykin at home?'

'Walk in, please,' said James.

'My snakes alive!' said Taykin, 'what a day we're having. Three visitors in one morning. How kind of you to call. Won't you take a chair?'

'I hoped,' said the veiled Princess, 'that you'd give me something else to take.'

'A glass of wine,' said Taykin. 'You'll take a glass of wine?'

'No, thank you,' said the beggar maid who was the Princess.

'Then take ... take your veil off,' said the nurse, 'or you won't feel the benefit of it when you go out.'

'I can't,' said Aura, 'it wouldn't be safe.'

'Too beautiful, eh?' said the Magician. 'Still—you're quite safe here.'

'Can you do magic?' she abruptly asked.

'A little,' said he ironically.

'Well,' said she, 'it's like this. I'm so ugly no one can bear to look at me. And I want to go as kitchenmaid to the palace. They want a cook and a scullion and a kitchenmaid. I thought perhaps you'd give me something to make me pretty. I'm only a poor beggar maid.... It would be a great thing to me if....'

'Go along with you,' said Taykin, very cross indeed. 'I never give to beggars.'

'Here's twopence,' whispered poor James, pressing it into her hand, 'it's all I've got left.'

'Thank you,' she whispered back. 'You are good.'

And to the Magician she said:

'I happen to have fifty pounds. I'll give it you for a new face.'

'Done,' cried Taykin. 'Here's another stupid one!' He grabbed the money, waved his wand, and then and there before the astonished eyes of the nurse and the apprentice the ugly beggar maid became the loveliest princess in the world.

'Lor!' said the nurse.

'My dream!' cried the apprentice.

'Please,' said the Princess, 'can I have a looking-glass?' The apprentice ran to unhook the one that hung over the kitchen sink, and handed it to her. 'Oh,' she said, 'how very pretty I am. How can I thank you?'

'Quite easily,' said the Magician, 'beggar maid as you are, I hereby offer you my hand and heart.'

He put his hand into his waistcoat and pulled out his heart. It was fat and pink, and the Princess did not like the look of it.

'Thank you very much,' said she, 'but I'd rather not.'

'But I insist,' said Taykin.

'But really, your offer....'

'Most handsome, I'm sure,' said the nurse.

'My affections are engaged,' said the Princess, looking down. 'I can't marry you.'

'Am I to take this as a refusal?' asked Taykin; and the Princess said she feared that he was.

'Very well, then,' he said, 'I shall see you home, and ask your father about it. He'll not let you refuse an offer like this. Nurse, come and tie my necktie.'

So he went out, and the nurse with him.

Then the Princess told the apprentice in a very great hurry who she was.

'It would never do,' she said, 'for him to see me home. He'd find out that I was the Princess, and he'd uglify me again in no time.'

'He sha'n't see you home,' said James. 'I may be stupid but I'm strong too.'

'How brave you are,' said Aura admiringly, 'but I'd rather slip away quietly, without any fuss. Can't you undo the patent lock of that door?' The apprentice tried but he was too stupid, and the Princess was not strong enough.

'I'm sorry,' said the apprentice who was a Prince. 'I can't undo the door, but when he does I'll hold him and you can get away. I dreamed of you this morning,' he added.

'I dreamed of you too,' said she, 'but you were different.'

'Perhaps,' said poor James sadly, 'the person you dreamed about wasn't stupid, and I am.'

'Are you really?' cried the Princess. 'I am so glad!'

'That's rather unkind, isn't it?' said he.

'No; because if that's all that makes you different from the man I dreamed about I can soon make that all right.'

And with that she put her hands on his shoulders and kissed him. And at her kiss his stupidness passed away like a cloud, and he became as clever as any one need be; and besides knowing all the ordinary lessons he would have learned if he had stayed at home in his palace, he knew who he was, and where he was, and why, and he knew all the geography of his father's kingdom, and the exports and imports and the condition of politics. And he knew also that the Princess loved him.

So he caught her in his arms and kissed her, and they were very happy, and told each other over and over again what a beautiful world it was, and how wonderful it was that they should have found each other, seeing that the world is not only beautiful but rather large.

'That first one was a magic kiss, you know,' said she. 'My fairy godmother gave it to me, and I've been keeping it all these years for you. You must get away from here, and come to the palace. Oh, you'll manage it—you're clever now.'

'Yes,' he said, 'I am clever now. I can undo the lock for you. Go, my dear, go before he comes back.'

So the Princess went. And only just in time; for as she went out of one door Taykin came in at the other.

He was furious to find her gone; and I should not like to write down the things he said to his apprentice when he found that James had been so stupid as to open the door for her. They were not polite things at all.

He tried to follow her. But the Princess had warned the guards, and he could not get out.

'Oh,' he cried, 'if only my old magic would work outside this tower. I'd soon be even with her.'

And then in a strange, confused, yet quite sure way, he felt that the spell that held him, the White Witch's spell, was dissolved.

'To the palace!' he cried; and rushing to the cauldron that hung over the fire he leaped into it, leaped out in the form of a red lion, and disappeared.

Without a moment's hesitation the Prince, who was his apprentice, followed him, calling out the same words and leaping into the same cauldron, while the poor nurse screamed and wrung her hands. As he touched the liquor in the cauldron he felt that he was not quite himself. He was, in fact, a green dragon. He felt himself vanish—a most uncomfortable sensation—and reappeared, with a suddenness that took his breath away, in his own form and at the back door of the palace.

The time had been short, but already the Magician had succeeded in obtaining an engagement as palace cook. How he did it without references I don't know. Perhaps he made the references by magic as he had made the eggs, and the apples, and the handkerchief.

Taykin's astonishment and annoyance at being followed by his faithful apprentice were soon soothed, for he saw that a stupid scullion would be of great use. Of course he had no idea that James had been made clever by a kiss.

'But how are you going to cook?' asked the apprentice. 'You don't know how!'

'I shall cook,' said Taykin, 'as I do everything else—by magic.' And he did. I wish I had time to tell you how he turned out a hot dinner of seventeen courses from totally empty saucepans, how James looked in a cupboard for spices and found it empty, and how next moment the nurse walked out of it. The Magician had been so long alone that he seemed to revel in the luxury of showing off to some one, and he leaped about from one cupboard to another, produced cats and cockatoos out of empty jars, and made mice and rabbits disappear and reappear till James's head was in a whirl, for all his cleverness; and the nurse, as she washed up, wept tears of pure joy at her boy's wonderful skill.

'All this excitement's bad for my heart, though,' Taykin said at last, and pulling his heart out of his chest, he put it on a shelf, and as he did so his magic note-book fell from his breast and the apprentice picked it up. Taykin did not see him do it; he was busy making the kitchen lamp fly about the room like a pigeon.

It was just then that the Princess came in, looking more lovely than ever in a simple little morning frock of white chiffon and diamonds.

'The beggar maid,' said Taykin, 'looking like a princess! I'll marry her just the same.'

'I've come to give the orders for dinner,' she said; and then she saw who it was, and gave one little cry and stood still, trembling.

'To order the dinner,' said the nurse. 'Then you're——'

'Yes,' said Aura, 'I'm the Princess.'

'You're the Princess,' said the Magician. 'Then I'll marry you all the more. And if you say no I'll uglify you as the word leaves your lips. Oh, yes—you think I've just been amusing myself over my cooking—but I've really been brewing the strongest spell in the world. Marry me—or drink——'

The Princess shuddered at these dreadful words.

'Drink, or marry me,' said the Magician. 'If you marry me you shall be beautiful for ever.'

'Ah,' said the nurse, 'he's a match even for a Princess.'

'I'll tell papa,' said the Princess, sobbing.

'No, you won't,' said Taykin. 'Your father will never know. If you won't marry me you shall drink this and become my scullery maid—my hideous scullery maid—and wash up for ever in the lonely tower.'

He caught her by the wrist.

'Stop,' cried the apprentice, who was a Prince.

'Stop? Me? Nonsense! Pooh!' said the Magician.

'Stop, I say!' said James, who was Fortunatus. 'I've got your heart!' He had—and he held it up in one hand, and in the other a cooking knife.

'One step nearer that lady,' said he, 'and in goes the knife.'

The Magician positively skipped in his agony and terror.

'I say, look out!' he cried. 'Be careful what you're doing. Accidents happen so easily! Suppose your foot slipped! Then no apologies would meet the case. That's my heart you've got there. My life's bound up in it.'

'I know. That's often the case with people's hearts,' said Fortunatus. 'We've got you, my dear sir, on toast. My Princess, might I trouble you to call the guards.'

The Magician did not dare to resist, so the guards arrested him. The nurse, though in floods of tears, managed to serve up a very good plain dinner, and after dinner the Magician was brought before the King.

Now the King, as soon as he had seen that his daughter had been made so beautiful, had caused a large number of princes to be fetched by telephone. He was anxious to get her married at once in case she turned ugly again. So before he could do justice to the Magician he had to settle which of the princes was to marry the Princess. He had chosen the Prince of the Diamond Mountains, a very nice steady young man with a good income. But when he suggested the match to the Princess she declined it, and the Magician, who was standing at the foot of the throne steps loaded with chains, clattered forward and said:

'Your Majesty, will you spare my life if I tell you something you don't know?'

The King, who was a very inquisitive man, said 'Yes.'

'Then know,' said Taykin, 'that the Princess won't marry your choice, because she's made one of her own—my apprentice.'

The Princess meant to have told her father this when she had got him alone and in a good temper. But now he was in a bad temper, and in full audience.

The apprentice was dragged in, and all the Princess's agonized pleadings only got this out of the King—

'All right. I won't hang him. He shall be best man at your wedding.'

Then the King took his daughter's hand and set her in the middle of the hall, and set the Prince of the Diamond Mountains on her right and the apprentice on her left. Then he said:

'I will spare the life of this aspiring youth on your left if you'll promise never to speak to him again, and if you'll promise to marry the gentleman on your right before tea this afternoon.'

The wretched Princess looked at her lover, and his lips formed the word 'Promise.'

So she said: 'I promise never to speak to the gentleman on my left and to marry the gentleman on my right before tea to-day,' and held out her hand to the Prince of the Diamond Mountains.

Then suddenly, in the twinkling of an eye, the Prince of the Diamond Mountains was on her left, and her hand was held by her own Prince, who stood at her right hand. And yet nobody seemed to have moved. It was the purest and most high-class magic.

'Dished,' cried the King, 'absolutely dished!'

'A mere trifle,' said the apprentice modestly. 'I've got Taykin's magic recipe book, as well as his heart.'

'Well, we must make the best of it, I suppose,' said the King crossly. 'Bless you, my children.'

He was less cross when it was explained to him that the apprentice was really the Prince of the Fortunate Islands, and a much better match than the Prince of the Diamond Mountains, and he was quite in a good temper by the time the nurse threw herself in front of the throne and begged the King to let the Magician off altogether—chiefly on the ground that when he was a baby he was the dearest little duck that ever was, in the prettiest plaid frock, with the loveliest fat legs.

The King, moved by these arguments, said:

'I'll spare him if he'll promise to be good.'

'You will, ducky, won't you?' said the nurse, crying.

'No,' said the Magician, 'I won't; and what's more, I can't.'

The Princess, who was now so happy that she wanted every one else to be happy too, begged her lover to make Taykin good 'by magic.'

'Alas, my dearest Lady,' said the Prince, 'no one can be made good by magic. I could take the badness out of him—there's an excellent recipe in this note-book—but if I did that there'd be so very little left.'

'Every little helps,' said the nurse wildly.

Prince Fortunatus, who was James, who was the apprentice, studied the book for a few moments, and then said a few words in a language no one present had ever heard before.

And as he spoke the wicked Magician began to tremble and shrink.

'Oh, my boy—be good! Promise you'll be good,' cried the nurse, still in tears.

The Magician seemed to be shrinking inside his clothes. He grew smaller and smaller. The nurse caught him in her arms, and still he grew less and less, till she seemed to be holding nothing but a bundle of clothes. Then with a cry of love and triumph she tore the Magician's clothes away and held up a chubby baby boy, with the very plaid frock and fat legs she had so often and so lovingly described.

'I said there wouldn't be much of him when the badness was out,' said the Prince Fortunatus.

'I will be good; oh, I will,' said the baby boy that had been the Magician.

'I'll see to that,' said the nurse. And so the story ends with love and a wedding, and showers of white roses.

THE END