, and blew--as the
coach drove off, I would stand looking after it, feeling as if I could
not but start off with it on the instant into the wide, wide world.

I still took my flowers every day, when the sun had set, to the marble
table in the dim arbor. But since that evening all had been over. Not
a soul took any notice of them, and when I went to look after them
early the next morning, there they lay as I had left them, gazing
sadly at me with their heads hanging, and the dew-drops glistening
upon their fading petals as if they were weeping. This distressed me,
and I plucked no more flowers. I let the weeds grow in my garden as
they pleased, and the flowers stayed on their stalks until the wind
blew them away. Within me there were the same desolation and neglect.

In this critical state of affairs it happened once that, as I was
leaning out of my window gazing dully into vacancy, the lady's-maid
from the castle came tripping across the road. When she saw me she
came and stood just outside the window. "His Grace returned from
his travels yesterday," she remarked, hurriedly. "Indeed!" I said,
surprised, for I had taken no interest in anything for several weeks,
and did not even know that his Grace had been traveling. "Then his
lovely daughter will be very glad." The maid looked at me with a
strange expression of face, so that I began to wonder whether I had
said anything especially stupid. "He knows absolutely nothing!" she
said at last, turning up her little nose. "Well," she resumed, "there
is to be a ball and masquerade this evening at the castle in honor of
his Grace. My lady is to be dressed as a flower-girl--understand, as
a flower-girl. And she has noticed that you have particularly pretty
flowers in your garden." "That's strange," I thought to myself; "there
is hardly a flower to be seen there for the weeds!" But she continued:
"And since my lady needs perfectly fresh flowers for her costume, you
are to bring her some this evening, and wait under the big pear-tree
in the castle garden when it is dark until she comes for the flowers
herself."

I was completely dazed with joy at this intelligence, and in my
rapture I leaped out of the window and ran after the maid.

"Ugh, what an ugly dressing-gown!" she exclaimed, when she saw me
with my fluttering robe in the open air. This vexed me, but, not to be
behindhand in gallantry, I capered gaily after her to give her a kiss.
Unluckily, my feet became entangled in m