Page:On a pincushion.djvu/234

Jack. “She'd be so frightened if she came back, and didn’t find me.”

“Come back!” laughed the fairy. “Why, it isn’t twelve o'clock yet, and the New Year is not come in. Here is the street where you live.”

Jack could not believe that they had not been gone more than an hour. It seemed more like twenty.

From outside the window he could see the Prince kneeling on the sill in exactly the same position as when he had left him, and he wondered if the Princess was still sitting in the fire. Yes. When the wind-fairy placed him in the middle of the room, there she was in exactly the same place, with her golden hair falling over the bars.

“Well,” cried she and the Prince together, “what did he say, little Jack? Tell us at once.”

“I’m so cold,” said Jack; “I’m almost frozen.”

The Princess made a great blaze in the coals till the room was quite light. Then she turned to Jack again.

“Now,” she said, “you must be warm. Do not keep us any longer in suspense.”

Jack hesitated for a minute; then he looked at the Princess, and repeated what the old man had