g for seven days.
She had robes of pale green and velvet to wear, and slept in a room
inlaid with ivory.

When the feast was done, the Prince and Princess gave her such heaps of
gold and jewels that she could not carry them; but they gave her a
chariot to go home in, drawn by six white horses. On the seventh night,
which happened to be Christmas time, when the farmer's family had
settled in their own minds that she would never come back, and were
sitting down to supper, they heard the sound of her coachman's bugle,
and saw her alight with all the jewels and gold at the very back door
where she had brought in the ugly old woman.

The fairy chariot drove away, and never again came back to that
farmhouse after. But Childe Charity scoured and scrubbed no more, for
she grew a great lady, even in the eyes of her proud cousins.

CHAPTER V

SOUR AND CIVIL

Once again King Winwealth wished to hear a story told by the wonderful
chair, and orders were given for Snowflower to bring it to the King's
hall. She again brought the chair and laid her head on the cushion,
saying: "Chair of my grandmother, tell me a story." The voice from under
the cushion at once said: "Listen to the story of Sour and Civil."

Once upon a time there stood upon the seacoast of the west country a
small village of low cottages, where no one lived but fishermen. All
round it was a broad beach of snow-white sand, where nothing was to be
seen but gulls and other seabirds, and long tangled seaweeds cast up by
the tide that came and went night and day, summer and winter.

There was no harbour or port on all that shore. Ships passed by at a
distance, with their white sails set, and on the land side there lay
wide grassy downs, where peasants lived and shepherds fed their flocks.
There families never wanted for plenty of herrings and mackerel; and
what they had to spare the landsmen bought from them at the village
markets on the downs, giving them in exchange butter, cheese, and corn.

The two best fishermen in that village were the sons of two old widows,
who had no other children, and happened to be near neighbours. Their
family names were short, for they called the one Sour and the other
Civil. They were not related to one another so far as I ever heard. But
they had only one boat, and always fished together, though their names
expressed the difference of their natures--for Civil never used a hard
word where a soft one would do, and when Sour wa