Fairy Tales & Fantasy: George MacDonald Collection (With Complete Original Illustrations). George MacDonald
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course I will if you say so. But you know I can't pretend not to know."
"Of course not. But don't trouble yourself about it. You will see when the time comes."
So saying, the lady turned, and threw the little ball into the rose-fire.
"Oh, grandmother!" exclaimed Irene; "I thought you had spun it for me."
"So I did, my child. And you've got it."
"No; it's burnt in the fire."
The lady put her hand in the fire, brought out the ball, glimmering as before, and held it toward her. Irene stretched out her hand to take it, but the lady turned, and going to her cabinet, opened a drawer, and laid the ball in it.
"Have I done anything to vex you, grandmother?" said Irene pitifully.
"No, my darling. But you must understand that no one ever gives anything to another properly and really without keeping it. That ball is yours."
"Oh! I'm not to take it with me! You are going to keep it for me!"
"You are to take it with you. I've fastened the end of it to the ring on your finger."
Irene looked at the ring.
"I can't see it there, grandmother," she said.
"Feel—a little way from the ring—toward the cabinet," said the lady.
"Oh! I do feel it!" exclaimed the princess. "But I can't see it," she added, looking close to her outstretched hand.
"No. The thread is too fine for you to see it. You can only feel it. Now you can fancy how much spinning that took, although it does seem such a little ball."
"But what use can I make of it, if it lies in your cabinet?"
"That is what I will explain to you. It would be of no use to you—it wouldn't be yours at all if it did not lie in my cabinet. Now listen. If ever you find yourself in any danger—such, for example, as you were in this evening—you must take off your ring, and put it under the pillow of your bed. Then you must lay your forefinger, the same that wore the ring, upon the thread, and follow the thread wherever it leads you."
"Oh, how delightful! It will lead me to you, grandmother, I know!"
"Yes. But, remember, it may seem to you a very roundabout way indeed, and you must not double the thread. Of one thing you may be sure, that while you hold it, I hold it too."
"It is very wonderful!" said Irene thoughtfully. Then suddenly becoming aware, she jumped up, crying—"Oh, grandmother! here I have been sitting all this time in your chair, and you standing! I beg your pardon."
The lady laid her hand on her shoulder and said:
"Sit down again, Irene. Nothing pleases me better than to see any one sit in my chair. I am only too glad to stand so long as any one will sit in it."
"How kind of you!" said the princess, and sat down again.
"It makes me happy," said the lady.
"But," said Irene, still puzzled, "won't the thread get in somebody's way and be broken, if the one end is fast to my ring and the other laid in your cabinet?"
"You will find all that arranges itself. I am afraid it is time for you to go."
"Mightn't I stay and sleep with you to-night, grandmother?"
"No, not to-night. If I had meant you to stay to-night, I should have given you a bath; but you know everybody in the house is miserable about you, and it would be cruel to keep them so all night. You must go down stairs."
"I'm so glad, grandmother, you didn't say—go home—for this is my home. Mayn't I call this my home?"
"You may, my child. And I trust you will always think it your home. Now come. I must take you back without any one seeing you."
"Please, I want to ask you one question more," said Irene. "Is it because you have your crown on that you look so young?"
"No, child," answered her grandmother; "it is because I felt so young this evening, that I put my crown on. And it occurred to me that you would like to see your old grandmother in her best."
"Why do you call yourself old? You're not old, grandmother."
"I am very old indeed. It is so silly of people—I don't mean you, for you are such a tiny, and couldn't know better—but it is so silly of people to fancy that old age means crookedness and witheredness and feebleness and sticks and spectacles and rheumatism and forgetfulness! It is so silly! Old age has nothing whatever to do with all that. The right old age means strength and beauty and mirth and courage and clear eyes and strong painless limbs. I am older than you are able to think, and—"
"And look at you, grandmother!" cried Irene, jumping up, and flinging her arms about her neck. "I won't be so silly again, I promise you. At least—I'm rather afraid to promise—but if I am, I promise to be sorry for it—I do. I wish I were as old as you, grandmother. I don't think you are ever afraid of anything."
"Not for long, at least, my child. Perhaps by the time I am two thousand years of age, I shall, indeed, never be afraid of anything. But I must confess that I have sometimes been afraid about my children—sometimes about you, Irene."
"Oh, I'm so sorry, grandmother!—To-night, I suppose, you mean."
"Yes—a little to-night; but a good deal when you had all but made up your mind that I was a dream, and no real great-great-grandmother. You must not suppose that I am blaming you for that, I daresay it was out of your power to help it."
"I don't know, grandmother," said the princess, beginning to cry. "I can't always do myself as I should like. And I don't always try. I'm very sorry anyhow."
The lady stooped, lifted her in her arms, and sat down with her in her chair, holding her close to her bosom. In a few minutes the princess had sobbed herself to sleep. How long she slept, I do not know. When she came to herself she was sitting in her own high chair at the nursery table, with her doll's-house before her.
CHAPTER XVI
THE RING
THE same moment her nurse came into the room, sobbing. When she saw her sitting there, she started back with a loud cry of amazement and joy. Then running to her, she caught her up in her arms and covered her dear little face with kisses.
"My precious darling princess! where have you been? What has happened to you? We've all been crying our eyes out, and searching the house from top to bottom for you."
"Not quite from the top," thought Irene to herself; and she might have added—"not quite to the bottom," perhaps, if she had known all. But the one she would not, and the other she could not say.
"Oh, Lootie! I've had such a dreadful adventure!" she replied, and told her all about the cat with the long legs, and how she ran out upon the mountain, and came back again. But she said nothing of her grandmother or her lamp.
"And there we've been searching for you all over the house for more than an hour and a half!" exclaimed the nurse. "But that's no matter, now we've got you! Only, princess, I must say," she added, her mood changing, "what you ought to have done was to call for your own Lootie to come and help you, instead of running out of the house, and up the mountain, in that wild—I must say, foolish fashion."
"Well, Lootie," said Irene quietly, "perhaps if you had a big cat, all legs, running at you, you mightn't exactly know which was the wisest thing to do at the moment."
"I wouldn't run up the mountain, anyhow," returned Lootie.
"Not if you had time to think about it. But when those creatures came at you that night on the mountain, you were so frightened yourself that you lost your way home."
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