Chapter VI

"I must say," the raven remarked severely, "that, considering the fact that nobody invited you to come to this concert at all, and that you have no check for a reserved seat, it would look better in you to keep quiet and not disturb the entertainment."

"Concert!" exclaimed Vance, in bewilderment. "There isn't any concert."

"But there is going to be," returned the bird, more severely than before. "I'm going to sing myself. First, I shall sing a love-song. Be quiet!"

And without further ado he began, in a terribly hoarse and cracked voice,--

"Snip-snap, frip-frap,
Bungalee, tee hee lees;
Jip-jap; nip-nap,
Tungatee tinum gee me strap,
Bring me a bottle of cheese."

"Oh, come," exclaimed the Prince, "you must really know that that is nonsense! It certainly means nothing."

"How do you know?" demanded the raven, fixing his glittering eye on the Prince. "Do you understand the language of love?"

"No," said Vance, more humbly; "I must confess that I don't, though I've always heard it was very silly."

"Speaking of the boundaries of a king--" the raven began easily; but the Prince interrupted in great haste.

"Nobody _was_ speaking of boundaries," he said sharply; "you made that up yourself."

"--dom," resumed the raven, calmly, paying no sort of attention to the interruption of the Prince, but cocking his head on one side and looking wickedly out of one eye, "they are very useful to know, and there are various ways of learning them. Some people learn them in the school room; that's one way: some travel; that's--"

But before he could get any farther Vance had caught up a stone and flung it at him. With a terrible croaking the raven flew up into the air in circles higher and higher until he vanished straight overhead.

"Ten to one that was Godmother herself," grumbled Vance, as he picked up his box and started again along the dusty road.

All the rest of the day he travelled, growing more and more weary, until at sunset he came to a very old woman sitting beside a great tree upon the river's bank.

"Hallo!" cried Vance, not too politely.

The wrinkled old creature looked at the river, at the tree, at the sky,--everywhere, in a word, except at the travel-stained Vance.

"Come!" he said more roughly yet, "why don't you speak when you are spoken to? Do you know who I am?"

The aged crone wrinkled her forehead and lifted her grizzled eyebrows, still without looking at him.

"No," she answered coolly, "I don't know that I do. You look like a boot-black with that box on your shoulders, only that a boot-black would be more civil-spoken."

An angry retort sprang to the lips of the Prince, but before he could give vent to it a terrible little shrill sound from the box struck his ears. In sudden dismay he unslung the baby-house, and opened it to discover what was the matter with his family.

In the middle of the floor of the largest room of the baby-house were all the Court, gathered about the old King, who had fallen in a faint from hunger.

"He is starved!" cried the Queen, in a piercing wee voice of anguish.

"I am starving myself!" roared the Lord Chamberlain, in a keen though tiny roar.

"We are all starving!" shrieked the whole Court, in voices more or less audible.

"Well," Vance said, looking at the affliction of the little people, "I must say this is extremely disagreeable of them all to be starving. They always are starving."

"Very," the old woman echoed, with a sneering chuckle.

As she spoke, she took from beneath her faded cloak a basket in which were delicate white cakes, fruits, and honey. These she began to eat with great relish, apparently not at all interested in the Prince or his family.

"Come, now," cried he, "give me some of that! My Court is half dead."

"Really?" she returned, coolly munching away.

"Yes," shouted Vance, vainly attempting to snatch something from the well-filled basket, "and I must have a cake to feed them on."

The old lady made no resistance, but only flitted up like a bird, in some unaccountable way, to a limb of a tree, where she sat eating as placidly as ever.

"Goodness!" said poor Vance, startled half out of his wits, "are you Godmother too? You shy about just like her."

"She is a friend of mine," answered the old woman. "I know all about you, too, for that matter."

There was nothing left for Vance but to beg for pity, and at last the strange creature threw him down half a small cake.

"There's plenty for your family."

Vance provided for his little people, and then began humbly to beg for a few morsels for himself.

"Wait," said the woman on the bough overhead, "till I see what there is in the pantry."

She disappeared with great suddenness; but presently a little window opened in the side of the tree trunk, from which the wrinkled old face looked out.

"Here are a few dry crusts from the closet," she said. "You may have them. With a little honey I think they will go very well."

She handed two or three mouldy scraps of bread out as she spoke, which Vance took with as good grace as he could muster.

"Where is the honey?" he asked, eying his crusts ruefully.

"Oh, I'll eat the honey while you eat the crusts," was the answer. "That is by far the best way to arrange it."

"You are mean enough, I hope," he exclaimed angrily.

But, alas! at the word the crusts left his grasp and appeared in the hand of the old woman.

"Oh, very well," she said, "just as you please! You are not obliged to have them, of course."

Poor Vance was ready to cry with vexation and hunger, and quite broke down at this last misfortune. He begged so humbly for the crusts that at last the queer old crone relented and gave them back; and never did anything taste sweeter to him than these dry and mouldy morsels of bread.

"You may sleep where you are," the woman said as he finished; and she closed the window with a slam, leaving it impossible to say where it had been.

"Oh, by the way," she cried, a moment later, sticking her head through the bark of the tree, in a way that looked very uncomfortable indeed, "about those boundaries, you know, and the Crushed Strawberry Wizard, I was going to say--But, no; on the whole, it's no matter."

And once more she disappeared, not again to be seen.

"I must say," muttered Prince Vance, "strange things happen to me all the time."

And curling himself up on the moss, he fell fast asleep from weariness.