bserving that the balustrade of the staircase became a bar
of burnished gold, as his hand passed over it in his descent. He lifted
the door-latch (it was brass only a moment ago, but golden when his
fingers quitted it), and emerged into the garden. Here, as it happened, he
found a great number of beautiful roses in full bloom, and others in all
the stages of lovely bud and blossom. Very delicious was their fragrance
in the morning breeze. Their delicate blush was one of the fairest sights
in the world; so gentle, so modest, and so full of sweet tranquillity did
these roses seem to be.

But Midas knew a way to make them far more precious, according to his way
of thinking, than roses had ever been before. So he took great pains in
going from bush to bush, and exercised his magic touch most indefatigably;
until every individual flower and bud, and even the worms at the heart of
some of them, were changed to gold. By the time this good work was
completed, King Midas was summoned to breakfast; and as the morning air
had given him an excellent appetite, he made haste back to the palace.

What was usually a king's breakfast in the days of Midas, I really do not
know, and cannot stop now to investigate. To the best of my belief,
however, on this particular morning, the breakfast consisted of hot cakes,
some nice little brook trout, roasted potatoes, fresh boiled eggs, and
coffee, for King Midas himself, and a bowl of bread and milk for his
daughter Marygold. At all events, this is a breakfast fit to set before a
king; and, whether he had it or not, King Midas could not have had a
better.

Little Marygold had not yet made her appearance. Her father ordered her to
be called, and, seating himself at table, awaited the child's coming, in
order to begin his own breakfast. To do Midas justice, he really loved his
daughter, and loved her so much the more this morning, on account of the
good fortune which had befallen him. It was not a great while before he
heard her coming along the passage-way crying bitterly. This circumstance
surprised him, because Marygold was one of the cheerfullest little people
whom you would see in a summer's day, and hardly shed a thimbleful of
tears in a twelvemonth. When Midas heard her sobs, he determined to put
little Marygold into better spirits, by an agreeable surprise; so, leaning
across the table, he touched his daughter's bowl (which was a China one,
with pretty figures all around it), and transmut