nt about the country saying his name was
James, which it wasn't. A baker's wife found him and adopted him, and
sold the diamond buttons of his little overcoat, for three hundred
pounds, and as she was a very honest woman she put two hundred away for
James to have when he grew up.

The years rolled on. Aura continued to be hideous, and she was very
unhappy, till on her twentieth birthday her married cousin Belinda came
to see her. Now Belinda had been made ugly in her cradle too, so she
could sympathise as no one else could.

'But _I_ got out of it all right, and so will you,' said Belinda. 'I'm
sure the first thing to do is to find a magician.'

'Father banished them all twenty years ago,' said Aura behind her veil,
'all but the one who uglified me.'

'Then I should go to _him_,' said beautiful Belinda. 'Dress up as a
beggar maid, and give him fifty pounds to do it. Not more, or he may
suspect that you're not a beggar maid. It will be great fun. I'd go with
you only I promised Bellamant faithfully that I'd be home to lunch.' And
off she went in her mother-of-pearl coach, leaving Aura to look through
the bound volumes of _The Perfect Lady_ in the palace library, to find
out the proper costume for a beggar maid.

Now that very morning the Magician's old nurse had packed up a ham, and
some eggs, and some honey, and some apples, and a sweet bunch of
old-fashioned flowers, and borrowed the baker's boy to hold the horse
for her, and started off to see the Magician. It was forty years since
she'd seen him, but she loved him still, and now she thought she could
do him a good turn. She asked in the town for his address, and learned
that he lived in the Black Tower.

'But you'd best be careful,' the townsfolk said, 'he's a spiteful chap.'

'Bless you,' said the old nurse, 'he won't hurt me as nursed him when he
was a babe, in a plaid frock with the dearest little fat legs ever you
see.'

So she got to the tower, and the guards let her through. Taykin was
almost pleased to see her--remember he had had no visitors for twenty
years--and he was quite pleased to see the ham and the honey.

'But where did I put them _h_eggs?' said the nurse, 'and the apples--I
must have left them at home after all.'

She had. But the Magician just waved his hand in the air, and there was
a basket of apples that hadn't been there before. The eggs he took out
of her bonnet, the folds of her shawl, and even from his own mouth, just
like a conj