A low, glad cry, like the whinny of a horse, answered, and, presently, out of the wood on the opposite side of the glade, came gently trotting the loveliest little snow-white pony, with great shining blue wings, half-lifted from his shoulders.  Straight towards the little girl, neither hurrying nor lingering, he trotted with light elastic tread.

Rosamond’s love for animals broke into a perfect passion of delight at the vision.  She rushed to meet the pony with such haste, that, although clearly the best trained animal under the sun, he started back, plunged, reared, and struck out with his fore-feet ere he had time to observe what sort of a creature it was that had so startled him.  When he perceived it was a little girl, he dropped instantly upon all fours, and content with avoiding her, resumed his quiet trot in the direction of his mistress.  Rosamond stood gazing after him in miserable disappointment.

When he reached the child, he laid his head on her shoulder, and she put her arm up round his neck; and after she had talked to him a little, he turned and came trotting back to the princess.

Almost beside herself with joy, she began caressing him in the rough way which, not-withstanding her love for them, she was in the habit of using with animals; and she was not gentle enough, in herself even, to see that be did not like it, and was only putting up with it for the sake of his mistress.  But when, that she might jump upon his back, she laid hold of one of his wings, and ruffled some of the blue feathers, he wheeled suddenly about, gave his long tail a sharp whisk which threw her flat on the grass, and, trotting back to his mistress, bent down his head before her as if asking excuse for ridding himself of the unbearable.

The princess was furious.  She had forgotten all her past life up to the time when she first saw the child:  her beauty had made her forget, and yet she was now on the very borders of hating her.  What she might have done, or rather tried to do, had not Peggy’s tail struck her down with such force that for a moment she could not rise, I cannot tell.

But while she lay half-stunned, her eyes fell on a little flower just under them.  It stared up in her face like the living thing it was, and she could not take her eyes off its face.  It was like a primrose trying to express doubt instead of confidence.  It seemed to put her half in mind of something, and she felt as if shame were coming.  She put out her hand to pluck it; but the moment her fingers touched it, the flower withered up, and hung as dead on its stalks as if a flame of fire had passed over it.

Then a shudder thrilled through the heart of the princess, and she thought with herself, saying—­“What sort of a creature am I that the flowers wither when I touch them, and the ponies despise me with their tails?  What a wretched, coarse, ill-bred creature I must be!  There is that lovely child giving life instead of death to the flowers, and a moment ago I was hating her!  I am made horrid, and I shall be horrid, and I hate myself, and yet I can’t help being myself!”