s
no anger like that of a lazy person who is made to work against his
will.

And they crept out of the dark domes of their houses and came down in
their dust dresses and cobweb cloaks, and crept up to the palace where
every one had gone to bed long before, and stood round the
mother-of-pearl cradle where the baby princess lay asleep. And they
reached their seven dark right hands out across the white satin
coverlet, and the oldest and hoarsest and laziest said:

'She shall grow uglier every day, except Sundays, and every Sunday she
shall be seven times prettier than the Sunday before.'

'Why not uglier every day, and a double dose on Sunday?' asked the
youngest and spitefullest of the wicked Bell-people.

'Because there's no rule without an exception,' said the eldest and
hoarsest and laziest, 'and she'll feel it all the more if she's pretty
once a week. And,' he added, 'this shall go on till she finds a bell
that doesn't ring, and can't ring, and never will ring, and wasn't made
to ring.'

'Why not for ever?' asked the young and spiteful.

'Nothing goes on for ever,' said the eldest Bell-person, 'not even
ill-luck. And we have to leave her a way out. It doesn't matter. She'll
never know what it is. Let alone finding it.'

Then they went back to the belfry and rearranged as well as they could
the comfortable web-and-owls' nest furniture of their houses which had
all been shaken up and disarranged by that absurd ringing of bells at
the birth of a Princess that nobody could really be pleased about.

When the Princess was two weeks old the King said to the Queen:

'My love--the Princess is not so handsome as I thought she was.'

'Nonsense, Henry,' said the Queen, 'the light's not good, that's all.'

Next day--it was Sunday--the King pulled back the lace curtains of the
cradle and said:

'The light's good enough now--and you see she's----'

He stopped.

'It _must_ have been the light,' he said, 'she looks all right to-day.'

'Of course she does, a precious,' said the Queen.

But on Monday morning His Majesty was quite sure really that the
Princess was rather plain, for a Princess. And when Sunday came, and the
Princess had on her best robe and the cap with the little white ribbons
in the frill, he rubbed his nose and said there was no doubt dress did
make a great deal of difference. For the Princess was now as pretty as a
new daisy.

The Princess was several years old before her mother could be got to se