the
better behaved and the more beautiful the more she had of it. Summer and
winter it was quite the same; only she could not stay so long in the
water when they had to break the ice to let her in. Any day, from
morning to evening in summer, she might be descried--a streak of white
in the blue water--lying as still as the shadow of a cloud, or shooting
along like a dolphin; disappearing, and coming up again far off, just
where one did not expect her. She would have been in the lake of a night
too, if she could have had her way; for the balcony of her window
overhung a deep pool in it; and through a shallow reedy passage she
could have swum out into the wide wet water, and no one would have been
any the wiser. Indeed, when she happened to wake in the moonlight she
could hardly resist the temptation. But there was the sad difficulty of
getting into it. She had as great a dread of the air as some children
have of the water. For the slightest gust of wind would blow her away;
and a gust might arise in the stillest moment. And if she gave herself a
push towards the water and just failed of reaching it, her situation
would be dreadfully awkward, irrespective of the wind; for at best there
she would have to remain, suspended in her night-gown, till she was seen
and angled for by somebody from the window.

"Oh! if I had my gravity," thought she, contemplating the water, "I
would flash off this balcony like a long white sea-bird, headlong into
the darling wetness. Heigh-ho!"

This was the only consideration that made her wish to be like other
people.

Another reason for her being fond of the water was that in it alone she
enjoyed any freedom. For she could not walk without a _cortege_,
consisting in part of a troop of light-horse, for fear of the liberties
which the wind might take with her. And the king grew more apprehensive
with increasing years, till at last he would not allow her to walk
abroad at all without some twenty silken cords fastened to as many parts
of her dress, and held by twenty noblemen. Of course horseback was out
of the question. But she bade good-bye to all this ceremony when she got
into the water.

And so remarkable were its effects upon her, especially in restoring her
for the time to the ordinary human gravity, that Hum-Drum and Kopy-Keck
agreed in recommending the king to bury her alive for three years; in
the hope that, as the water did her so much good, the earth would do her
yet more. But the k