ering mothers and
their little ones whom your husband hastens to aid. All will be well
with you, believe me. But you, too, must be brave and unselfish."

It was no use. All she said but made the Queen more indignant. She would
scarcely bid her husband farewell: she turned her back to the fairy with
undignified petulance.

"Foolish child," said the Northern spirit. "She will learn better some
day."

Then she gave all her attention to the matter she had come about,
explaining to the King as they journeyed exactly the measures he must
take and the difficulties to be overcome. But though the King had the
greatest faith in her advice, and never doubted that it was his duty to
obey, his heart was sore, as you can understand.

Things turned out as he had said. The severe weather disappeared again
as if by magic, and some weeks of unusually mild days followed. And when
the winter did set in for good at last, it was with no great rigor. From
time to time news reached the palace of the King's welfare. The tidings
were cheering. His presence was effecting all that the fairy had hoped.

So Queen Claribel ought to have been happy. But she was determined not
to be. She did nothing but cry and abuse the fairy, declaring that she
would never see her dear Brave-Heart again, and that if ever her baby
came she was sure it would not live, or that there would be something
dreadful the matter with it.

"It is not fair," she kept saying, "it is a shame that I should suffer
so."

And even when on Christmas Eve a beautiful little girl was born, as
pretty and lively and healthy as could be wished, and even though the
next day brought the announcement of the King's immediate return,
Claribel still nursed her resentment, though in the end it came to be
directed entirely against the fairy. For when she saw Brave-Heart again,
his tender affection and his delight in his little daughter made it
impossible for her not to "forgive him," as she expressed it, though she
could not take any interest in his accounts of his visit to the north
and all he had been able to do there.

A great feast was arranged in honor of the christening of the little
Princess. All the grand people of the neighborhood were bidden to it,
nor, you may be sure, did the good King forget the poorer folk. The four
fairies were invited, for it was a matter of course that they should be
the baby's godmothers. And though the Queen would gladly have excluded
the Northern fairy,