when it gave a
gentle dip, like a nod of satisfaction, and immediately started back, as
fast as ever, in the direction of the tower.

He reached the skylight, which he found exactly as he had left it, and
slipped in, cloak and all, as easily as he had got out. He had
scarcely reached the floor, and was still sitting in the middle of his
traveling-cloak,--like a frog on a water-lily leaf, as his godmother had
expressed it,--when he heard his nurse's voice outside.

"Bless us! what has become of your Royal Highness all this time? To
sit stupidly here at the window till it is quite dark, and leave the
skylight open, too. Prince! what can you be thinking of? You are the
silliest boy I ever knew."

"Am I?" said he absently, and never heeding her crossness; for his only
anxiety was lest she might find out anything.

She would have been a very clever person to have done so. The instant
Prince Dolor got off it, the cloak folded itself up into the tiniest
possible parcel, tied all its own knots, and rolled itself of its own
accord into the farthest and darkest corner of the room. If the nurse
had seen it, which she didn't, she would have taken it for a mere bundle
of rubbish not worth noticing.

Shutting the skylight with an angry bang, she brought in the supper and
lit the candles with her usual unhappy expression of countenance. But
Prince Dolor hardly saw it; he only saw, hid in the corner where nobody
else would see it, his wonderful traveling-cloak. And though his supper
was not particularly nice, he ate it heartily, scarcely hearing a word
of his nurse's grumbling, which to-night seemed to have taken the place
of her sullen silence.

"Poor woman!" he thought, when he paused a minute to listen and look at
her with those quiet, happy eyes, so like his mother's. "Poor woman! she
hasn't got a traveling-cloak!"

And when he was left alone at last, and crept into his little bed, where
he lay awake a good while, watching what he called his "sky-garden," all
planted with stars, like flowers, his chief thought was--"I must be up
very early to-morrow morning, and get my lessons done, and then I'll go
traveling all over the world on my beautiful cloak."

So next day he opened his eyes with the sun, and went with a good heart
to his lessons. They had hitherto been the chief amusement of his dull
life; now, I am afraid, he found them also a little dull. But he tried
to be good,--I don't say Prince Dolor always was good, but he