beautiful,
king-like.

"Yes," he said, "if you desire it, I will be your king. And I will do my
best to make my people happy."

Then there arose, from inside and outside the tower, such a shout as
never yet was heard across the lonely plain.

Prince Dolor shrank a little from the deafening sound. "How shall I be
able to rule all this great people? You forget, my lords, that I am only
a little boy still."

"Not so very little," was the respectful answer. "We have searched
in the records, and found that your Royal Highness--your Majesty, I
mean--is fifteen years old."

"Am I?" said Prince Dolor; and his first thought was a thoroughly
childish pleasure that he should now have a birthday, with a whole
nation to keep it. Then he remembered that his childish days were done.
He was a monarch now. Even his nurse, to whom, the moment he saw her,
he had held out his hand, kissed it reverently, and called him
ceremoniously "his Majesty the King."

"A king must be always a king, I suppose," said he half-sadly, when, the
ceremonies over, he had been left to himself for just ten minutes, to
put off his boy's clothes and be reattired in magnificent robes, before
he was conveyed away from his tower to the royal palace.

He could take nothing with him; indeed, he soon saw that, however
politely they spoke, they would not allow him to take anything. If he
was to be their king, he must give up his old life forever. So he looked
with tender farewell on his old books, old toys, the furniture he knew
so well, and the familiar plain in all its levelness--ugly yet pleasant,
simply because it was familiar.

"It will be a new life in a new world," said he to himself; "but I'll
remember the old things still. And, oh! if before I go I could but once
see my dear old godmother."

While he spoke he had laid himself down on the bed for a minute or
two, rather tired with his grandeur, and confused by the noise of the
trumpets which kept playing incessantly down below. He gazed, half
sadly, up to the skylight, whence there came pouring a stream of
sunrays, with innumerable motes floating there, like a bridge thrown
between heaven and earth. Sliding down it, as if she had been made of
air, came the little old woman in gray.

So beautiful looked she--old as she was--that Prince Dolor was at first
quite startled by the apparition. Then he held out his arms in eager
delight.

"Oh, godmother, you have not forsaken me!"

"Not at all, my son.