This, of course, was conclusive evidence.  Margary and her mother had faith in the oldest woman’s opinion; and so did all the other villagers.  She told a good many people how the little stranger was a Lindsay, before she went to bed that night.  And he really was a Lindsay, too; though it was singular how the oldest woman divined it with a buttercup.

The pretty child had straightway driven off in his coach-and-four as soon as he had left Margary’s mother’s cottage; he had only stopped to have some defect in the wheels remedied.  But there had been time enough for a great excitement to be stirred up in the village.

All any one talked about the next day, was the stranger.  Every one who had seen him, had some new and more marvelous item; till charming as the child really was, he became, in the popular estimation, a real fairy prince.

When Margary and the other children went to school, with their horn-books hanging at their sides, they found the schoolmaster greatly excited over it.  He was a verse-maker, and though he had not seen the stranger himself, his imagination more than made amends for that.  So the scholars were not under a very strict rule that day, for the master was busy composing a poem about the stranger.  Every now and then a line of the poem got mixed in with the lessons.

The schoolmaster told in beautiful meters about the stranger’s rich attire, and his flowing locks of real gold wire, his lips like rubies, and his eyes like diamonds.  He furnished the little dog with hair of real floss silk, and called his ribbon a silver chain.  Then the coach, as it rolled along, presented such a dazzling appearance, that several persons who inadvertently looked at it had been blinded.  It was the schoolmaster’s opinion, set forth in his poem, that this really was a prince.  One could scarcely doubt it, on reading the poem.  It is a pity it has not been preserved, but it was destroyed—­how, will transpire further on.

Well, two days after this dainty stranger with his coach-and-four came to the village, a little wretched beggar-boy, leading by a dirty string a forlorn muddy little dog, appeared on the street.  He went to the tavern first, but the host pushed him out of the door, throwing a pewter porringer after him, which hit the poor little dog and made it yelp.  Then he spoke pitifully to the people he met, and knocked at the cottage doors; but every one drove him away.  He met the oldest woman, but she gathered her skirts closely around her and hobbled by, her pointed nose up in the air, and her cap-strings flying straight out behind.

“I prithee, granny,” he called after her, “try me with the buttercup again, and see if I be not a Lindsay.”

“Thou a Lindsay,” quoth the oldest woman contemptuously; but she was very curious, so she turned around and held a buttercup underneath the boy’s dirty chin.

“Bah,” said the oldest woman, “a Lindsay indeed!  Butter hath no charm for thee, and the Lindsays, all loved it.  I know, for I was nurse in the family a hundred year ago.”