th bursts of laughter from little Daylight, whose heart the
old fairy's curse could not reach; she was Daylight still, only a little
in the wrong place, for she always dropped asleep at the first hint of
dawn in the east. But her merriment was of short duration. When the moon
was at the full, she was in glorious spirits, and as beautiful as it was
possible for a child of her age to be. But as the moon waned, she faded,
until at last she was wan and withered like the poorest, sickliest child
you might come upon in the streets of a great city in the arms of a
homeless mother. Then the night was quiet as the day, for the little
creature lay in her gorgeous cradle night and day with hardly a motion,
and indeed at last without even a moan, like one dead. At first they
often thought she was dead, but at last they got used to it, and only
consulted the almanac to find the moment when she would begin to revive,
which, of course, was with the first appearance of the silver thread of
the crescent moon. Then she would move her lips, and they would give her
a little nourishment; and she would grow better and better and better,
until for a few days she was splendidly well. When well, she was always
merriest out in the moonlight; but even when near her worst, she seemed
better when, in warm summer nights, they carried her cradle out into
the light of the waning moon. Then in her sleep she would smile the
faintest, most pitiful smile.

For a long time very few people ever saw her awake. As she grew older
she became such a favourite, however, that about the palace there were
always some who would contrive to keep awake at night, in order to be
near her. But she soon began to take every chance of getting away from
her nurses and enjoying her moonlight alone. And thus things went on
until she was nearly seventeen years of age. Her father and mother had
by that time got so used to the odd state of things that they had ceased
to wonder at them. All their arrangements had reference to the state
of the Princess Daylight, and it is amazing how things contrive to
accommodate themselves. But how any prince was ever to find and deliver
her, appeared inconceivable.

As she grew older she had grown more and more beautiful, with the
sunniest hair and the loveliest eyes of heavenly blue, brilliant and
profound as the sky of a June day. But so much more painful and sad was
the change as her bad time came on. The more beautiful she was in the
full mo