Stories Oct, 2013 | Page 446

grandmother laid her! She hardly could have told she was lying upon anything: she felt nothing but the softness. The old lady having undressed herself, lay down beside her. "Why don't you put out your moon?" asked the princess. "That never goes out, night or day," she answered. "In the darkest night, if any of my pigeons are out on a message, they always see my moon, and know where to fly to." "But if somebody besides the pigeons were to see it--somebody about the house, I mean--they would come to look what it was, and find you." "The better for them then," said the old lady. "But it does not happen above five times in a hundred years that any one does see it. The greater part of those who do, take it for a meteor, wink their eyes, and forget it again. Besides, nobody could find the room except I pleased. Besides again--I will tell you a secret--if that light were to go out, you would fancy yourself lying in a bare garret, on a heap of old straw, and would not see one of the pleasant things round about you all the time." Madhuri Noah C:\Users\MNoah\Documents\The Princess and the Goblin1.docx Page 445 of 634