"Dear godmother," he cried pitifully, "do help me! Tell me just this once and I'll never forget again."Instantly the words came rushing into his head--"Abracadabra, tum tum ti!" Was that it? Ah! yes--for the cloak began to turn slowly.
He repeated the charm again, more distinctly and firmly, when it gave a gentle dip, like a nod of satisfaction, and immediately started back, as fast as ever, in the direction of the tower.
He reached the skylight, which he found exactly as he had left it, and slipped in, cloak and all, as easily as he had got out. He had scarcely reached the floor, and was still sitting in the middle of his traveling-cloak,--like a frog on a water-lily leaf, as his godmother had expressed it,--when he heard his nurse's voice outside.
"Bless us! what has become of your Royal Highness all this time? To sit stupidly here at the window till it is quite dark, and leave the skylight open, too. Prince! what can you be thinking of? You are the silliest boy I ever knew.""Am I?" said he absently, and never heeding her crossness; for his only anxiety was lest she might find out anything.
She would have been a very clever person to have done so. The instant Prince Dolor got off it, the cloak folded itself up into the tiniest possible parcel, tied all its own knots, and rolled itself of its own accord into the farthest and darkest corner of the room. If the nurse had seen it, which she didn't, she would have taken it for a mere bundle of rubbish not worth noticing.
Shutting the skylight with an angry bang, she brought in the supper and lit the candles with her usual unhappy expression of countenance.
But Prince Dolor hardly saw it; he only saw, hid in the corner where nobody else would see it, his wonderful traveling-cloak. And though his supper was not particularly nice, he ate it heartily, scarcely hearing a word of his nurse's grumbling, which to-night seemed to have taken the place of her sullen silence.
"Poor woman!" he thought, when he paused a minute to listen and look at her with those quiet, happy eyes, so like his mother's. "Poor woman! she hasn't got a traveling-cloak!"And when he was left alone at last, and crept into his little bed, where he lay awake a good while, watching what he called his "sky-garden," all planted with stars, like flowers, his chief thought was--"I must be up very early to-morrow morning, and get my lessons done, and then I'll go traveling all over the world on my beautiful cloak."So next day he opened his eyes with the sun, and went with a good heart to his lessons. They had hitherto been the chief amusement of his dull life; now, I am afraid, he found them also a little dull. But he tried to be good,--I don't say Prince Dolor always was good, but he generally tried to be,--and when his mind went wandering after the dark, dusty corner where lay his precious treasure, he resolutely called it back again.
"For," he said, "how ashamed my godmother would be of me if I grew up a stupid boy!"But the instant lessons were done, and he was alone in the empty room, he crept across the floor, undid the shabby little bundle, his fingers trembling with eagerness, climbed on the chair, and thence to the table, so as to unbar the skylight,--he forgot nothing now,--said his magic charm, and was away out of the window, as children say, "in a few minutes less than no time."Nobody missed him. He was accustomed to sit so quietly always that his nurse, though only in the next room, perceived no difference. And besides, she might have gone in and out a dozen times, and it would have been just the same;she never could have found out his absence.
For what do you think the clever godmother did? She took a quantity of moonshine, or some equally convenient material, and made an image, which she set on the window-sill reading, or by the table drawing, where it looked so like Prince Dolor that any common observer would never have guessed the deception; and even the boy would have been puzzled to know which was the image and which was himself.
And all this while the happy little fellow was away, floating in the air on his magic cloak, and seeing all sorts of wonderful things--or they seemed wonderful to him, who had hitherto seen nothing at all.
