down in paradise, and with your Suskind wailing for you
in the twilight! But that would be Alianora the Unattainable Princess.
Thus she comes across the Bay of Biscay, traveling from the far land of
Provence, in, they say, the appearance of a swan: and thus she bathes in
the pool wherein strange dreams engender: and thus she slips into the
robe of the Apsarasas when it is high time to be leaving such impudent
knaves as you have proved yourself to be."

"Yes, yes! a shift made all of shining white feathers, Sister. Here is a
feather that was broken from it as I clutched at her."

Math turned the feather in her hand. "Now to be sure! and did you ever
see the like of it! Still, a broken feather is no good to anybody, and,
as I have told you any number of times, I cannot have trash littering up
my kitchen."

So Math dropped this shining white feather into the fire, on which she
was warming over a pot of soup for Manuel's dinner, and they watched
this feather burn.

Manuel says, sighing, "Even so my days consume, and my youth goes out of
me, in a land wherein Suskind whispers of uncomfortable things, and
wherein there are no maids so clever and dear as Niafer, nor so lovely
as Alianora."

Math said: "I never held with speaking ill of the dead. So may luck and
fair words go with your Niafer in her pagan paradise. Of your Suskind
too"--Math crossed herself,--"the less said, the better. But as for your
Alianora, no really nice girl would be flying in the face of heaven and
showing her ankles to five nations, and bathing, on a Monday too, in
places where almost anybody might come along. It is not proper, but I
wonder at her parents."

"But, Sister, she is a princess!"

"Just so: therefore I burned the feather, because it is not wholesome
for persons of our station in life to be robbing princesses of anything,
though it be only of a feather."

"Sister, that is the truth! It is not right to rob anybody of anything,
and this would appear to make another bond upon me and another
obligation to be discharged, because in taking that feather I have taken
what did not belong to me."

"Boy, do not think you are fooling me, for when your face gets that look
on it, I know you are considering some nonsense over and above the
nonsense you are talking. However, from your description of the affair,
I do not doubt that gallivanting, stark-naked princess thought you were
for taking what did not belong to you. Therefore I burned the fea