Chapter 3

In a few days after the interview of Puck and Paudeen in the hut of the forester, there was great excitement at the court of Fairyland. The fashionable milliners and dress-makers never had seen such a time--orders from the aristocracy poured in upon them by scores, and their doors were beset by fashionable carriages, and little fairy footmen caparisoned in long coats with many capes, and broad, red bands fastened with shining buckles round their hats. The great _artistes_ who were at the head of these establishments saw themselves amassing fortunes from the sudden influx of fashionable custom. But the poor little fairy seamstresses, who sat up all night, sometimes without time to eat or sleep, from sunset to sunset, so that all these splendid dresses might be finished in time--they did not fare so well. They grew pale and sick, and sat swaying and swinging about as they worked, until one might have thought them the ghosts of fairy workers, come back for a ghostly midnight frolic in their old haunts. It was melancholy enough, truly; but then nobody knew any thing about it. The rich ladies, when their splendid robes came home, did not stop to think that good, earnest, faithful fairy hearts had embroidered the roses that adorned the skirts from their own cheeks, and spangled them with the broken fragments of their youth's faded dreams. If they had--

Well, and if they had?

That is not at all to the purport of my story; and so I will proceed to let the reader into the secret of all this flutter and fluster. A great prince had made his appearance at the court of Paterflor, and had created almost as great an excitement in Fairyland as a new prima donna with bright eyes and a _sfogato_ voice among mere mortals. Nobody knew exactly who he was, but he came from a great way off, and had a name as long as a province, and, beside being incalculably wealthy, it was universally voted (ladies vote in Fairyland) that he was the very handsomest love of a fairy knight that ever jingled spurs, or sighed at the feet of beauty. He had come to court evidently with the "highest recommendations" to the king, such as would have procured him immediate access into the first "circles," even in Philadelphia, where society lives behind barred doors, and goes about armed cap-a-pie against encroachment or intrusion. He had been at once received at the royal table, and a splendid suite of apartments had been assigned him in the palace itself. Such extraordinary attentions from the imperial family, of course, made the stranger a favorite and a welcome guest wherever he appeared; and there was not a lady at court who would not have given her eyes--if it would not have spoiled her beauty--for a smile from his magnificent mouth.

It was discovered, however, at a very early stage of the proceedings, that the chief object of the prince's admiration was the lady Dewbell, who, proud as she was, could not help feeling flattered by the evident and special devotion of one for whom the whole of her sex were dying. Sir Timothy Lawn, who, from pique or melancholy, or from some unknown cause, had left the court the very day after the arrival of the new prince, was not entirely forgotten, but was laid away carefully on a back shelf of her heart; and the lady Dewbell never had been so beautiful, so fascinating, so joyous and irresistible. Courts are as fickle as coquettes; and before the month had passed, in a series of brilliant _fêtes_ and entertainments, at all of which the prince and princess were the reigning toast, it was regarded as a settled thing that there would, ere the maple leaves grew red in the dying gaze of the year, be a royal marriage in Fairyland.

But while to all around the beautiful Dewbell was ever the same careless, saucy and happy creature as ever, in her heart she nursed a bitter sorrow. After many and severe struggles, she was forced at last to make to herself the humiliating acknowledgment that she deeply and truly loved Sir Timothy Lawn, that noble and chivalric spirit, whom her unworthy trifling had driven--so her frightened heart interpreted it--in disgust from her. Compelled in common courtesy to receive the devoted attentions of the stranger prince, and to hear every day and every hour repeated the earnest solicitations of her father that she should school herself to regard the stranger as her future husband, her little fairy heart was quite broken with its ceaseless struggles. Her pride and self-will were entirely vanquished, and she felt herself truly the most miserable of fairy maidens. Suicide is of course a thing strictly prohibited among immortals; but had it been otherwise, I sadly fear that one of the lady Dewbell's spider-web silk hose would some morning have been found without a garter, and she herself hanging like a beauteous exhalation among the elm-leaves in the morning sunshine. Oh, had Sir Timothy been there then, he would have found, instead of his imperious and tantalizing coquette, the tenderest and truest of disconsolate maidens, ready to melt into his arms between the delicious pause of a sigh and a kiss. "Naughty, cruel Sir Timothy! Horrid creature! to take all my nonsense for real earnest, and to go away and leave me to be persecuted to death!" exclaimed the lady Dewbell, with an uncontrollable burst of tears, as she threw herself, her toilet half finished, and her hair all strewn over her face and shoulders, upon her little praying cushion. "What will become of poor Bell!"

"What ails my daughter?" said the sweet, soft voice of the queen mother, as she knelt tenderly over her child, and pressed her head to her bosom. "Tell your sorrows to your mother."

"Oh, mother, _I_ am the most wretched fairy that ever existed. I don't want to marry that odious, red-haired stranger; and my father has made me promise that the wedding shall take place on Halloween--and I--I have consented. But I love Sir Timothy; and I wont marry any body but him," sobbed the poor creature, convulsively, as she cast herself upon the floor, and looked up to her mother, terrified and half frantic.

"But, dearest, you know you laughed at poor Sir Timothy's vows--and he is so sensitive."

"Oh, yes, I know I did, but I'll never do so any more. _If_ Sir Timothy will only come back and forgive me, and marry me, just this once, I will never, never offend him again as long as I live--never, never, never! Do, mamma, do make him come back!"

"Poor child! I will certainly do all I can. But you have promised to be married on Halloween."

"Oh, yes, but that is a good fortnight off, and you can bring Sir Timothy back before then, you know, and he can kill this horrid stranger, and then every body will be _so_ happy!" and the face of the volatile creature began already to re-clothe itself in smiles.

"I fear you are mistaken, love," said her mother, solemnly, and shaking her head in an impressive manner, she added, "do not deceive yourself with such fallacies, my daughter; your princely word is passed, your father's royal honor is pledged, and you must be married on Halloween."

The lady Dewbell, sobbing hysterically, again looked up. She was alone; at the same moment the cat-and-baby face of Puck glanced by the window, and a wild, mischievous laugh melted away into a song, of which the lady only caught the two last lines:

"He rideth fast, and he rideth well, But his heart still clings to the pretty Bell."

"Oh, bless thee, dear Puck!" sighed the haply wondering lady, rising and leaning from the window. "May thy sweet prophecy come true!"