"Help you to find the Princess!" he exclaimed; "don't you
suppose I should find her on my own account if I could? I should
have found her long before this if the idiots had not broken all my
bottles, and crystals, and retorts, and mirrors, and spilled all the
magic fluids, so that I cannot practice any white magic at all. The
idea of looking for a princess in a bottle--that comes of pinning
one's faith upon philosophy!"
"Then you cannot find the Princess by white magic?" the Head-nurse
asked timidly.
The Baron pounded the table again. "Of course I cannot," he replied,
"with all my magical utensils smashed in the search for her."
The Head-nurse sighed pitifully.
"I suppose that you do not like to go about with your face in the
crown of your bonnet?" the Baron remarked in a harsh voice.
The Head-nurse replied sadly that she did not.
"It doesn't seem to me that I should mind it much," said the Baron.
The Head-nurse looked at his grim old face through the peep-holes in
her bonnet-crown, and thought to herself that if she were no prettier
than he, she should not mind much either, but she said nothing.
Suddenly there was a knock at the tower-door.
"Excuse me a moment," said the Baron; "my housekeeper is deaf, and my
other servants have gone out." And he ran down the tower-stair, his
dressing-gown sweeping after him.
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