“Oh, dear me!” cried Cucu; “it is too mean that I should have to stay up on this old trellis.”

“Naughty boy!” scolded his mother.  “What are you talking about?  That ever I should be afflicted with such a fractious child; ’tis enough to turn me yellow;” and she spread out her pretty green apron, and waved her ribbons in the air, while she took a firmer hold upon the poor little Prince’s cap.

“Don’t you know that if I were to let go, off you would fall flat on your back upon the nasty wet ground, and very likely lie there all the rest of your life, growing wrinkled and yellow and sickly, while great ugly worms crawled over you, and everybody blamed me for a careless parent?  No! no!  I shall take good care you don’t get away from me, you may be sure.”

So, Cucu had to accept his fate as best he might, and amused himself watching his neighbors.  Every day, now, one or more of them left home and disappeared among the grass and flowers below.  Cucu imagined them as traveling off around the garden, but if he had seen them lying half buried in the earth, their bright brown faces dirty and streaked with tears, their merry little hearts nearly broken with woe, he would not have envied them so much.

Day after day passed, and the month of October came with its clear and cool nights.  Queen Cucurbita did not relish this at all, and, every morning, when the sun peeped at her, he wondered how he ever could have admired such a dried-up yellow old creature.  Cucu’s heart, on the contrary, grew happier all the time, he lifted up his heavy head that seemed to be lighter each day, and when the wind blew, he rattled against the trellis and wondered how it was he could move so easily.  “Poor Prince!” the Cat-bird whistled, as she perched above him, “your face is getting as brown and shining as one of those little Filberts, your cap is no longer green and pretty, and you look so light that a breath might blow you away.”

“I don’t care,” returned Cucu, “for I feel delighted, and so long as I can’t see my own face, what’s the odds?”

The next night was clear and very cold.  The people to whom the garden belonged brought out sheets and covered over the tender heliotropes and other flowers they valued, but they couldn’t have cared much for Queen Cucurbita, for they never gave her a thought.  When Cucu woke up bright and early and said good-morning to his mother, she did not reply.  He turned his head to look at her.  Oh, frightful sight! she hung to the trellis wilted and dead; her green dress was brown and torn, but her hard and wrinkled hand still grasped poor Cucu’s cap.

After the sun had been up some hours, a lady came into the garden and approached the home of the Cucurbita family.

“Oh, you beauty!” she cried, “what a lovely basket I shall make of you!” and, placing a hand on each of Cucu’s cheeks, she gave him a slight twist,—­his mother’s fingers let go; he was free.  The lady put him in her basket, and now he was really setting off on his travels.