Meanwhile, Princess Lily’s messenger had started off on horseback to find Miss Thomson, and it was not long before he reached Bee Cottage, Tyttenhanger Lane. He gave Miss Thomson his mistress’s message, and asked her if she had any answer he might take back with him.

“Yes,” said Miss Thomson, “tell your mistress that Miss T. always helps those who have the courage to ask her. I will come.”

So the messenger went posting back with his answer, and a hundred yards from the Castle gate narrowly escaped crushing with his horse’s hoofs a toad which was lolloping wearily

along the road in the other direction. For that was as far as poor Prince Peerio had managed to get in all this time. You see, he found it so difficult to get along with the letter in his mouth, because it stopped him from taking breath easily.

As soon as the messenger had left her, Miss Thomson put on her sugar-loaf hat and her little old cloak, took her stick, and started out on foot for the Castle. It was not very far, and soon she perceived coming towards her a great grey-green toad. How surprised she was, when she saw that it had a letter in its mouth, and how much more surprised when she stooped down and saw that the letter was addressed to herself! At first the toad would not let go, but she spoke to it and said that she was Miss Thomson. Then the toad let go. It let go of the letter and waited while she read it. And when she had read what the little cook at the inn had written in the letter, Miss Thomson bent her peaky nose right down to the toad’s ear and began whispering in it.

“I am sorry,” she said, “that Icannot turn you back again into a prince. There is only one way of doing that, and that is if somebody loves you and cherishes you as you are now, in the shape of a toad.”

Alas! thought Peerio to himself, who will do that to a hideous, icy creature like me? Must I spend the rest of my life like this?

But Miss Thomson read his thought and answered it. She spoke to him for a quarter of an hour, telling him exactly what he must do. And he listened and laid well to his heart all her counsel. Then, as she went on her way, he lolloped off the road into a ditch and rested there; for there was no longer any need for him to go to her cottage.

When Miss Thomson arrived at the tower, Princess Lily had almost forgotten why she had sent for her, for the sound of the Silver Trumpet was no longer in her ears. Therefore she had grown languid again, and she began talking to Miss Thomson as though she were one of the Royal Physicians, complaining of headaches and sleeplessness, and moaning peevishly of the wretchedness of her lot. But all Miss Thomson said was:

“What do you want?”

“Oh, I’m so miserable—such a wretched, useless creature.” “Well then, what are you afraid of?”

“How do you know I am afraid of anything?”

“You must be afraid of something, if you are a miserable, wretched, useless creature.

What are you afraid of?”

“Nothing. That is—I am afraid of—I don’t like—that is, I hate the idea of—of—” (she would not mention the word).

“Of what?” said Miss Thomson sharply.

“Of t—of toads,” answered Princess Lily, and began crying softly. Miss Thomson’s voice grew kinder.

“And why,” she said, “why, pray, should you hate one of God’s creatures more than another? Eh?”

Princess Lily had no answer. And now she remembered what her Father had said to her all those years ago on their way home from their walk, in the afternoon, before she had told Gamboy about the toad. “Only weak and silly people scream, when they see mice and spiders and toads,” he had said. “You must get to know them and you mustn’t be frightened.”

“I don’t know,” she answered humbly. “I’ll try not to.”

“That’s right,” said Miss Thomson. “You must get to know them. And shutting yourself up in this tower all day is hardly the best way about it, is it?”

“No—no,” said Lily, through her tears.

“I suppose you think that being afraid of a thing is a reason for running away from it?” “W-well,” said Lily doubtfully. “It does seem to be rather a good reason.”

At that Miss Thomson paused and looked thoughtful. Then she smiled good-humouredly.

Then she grew serious again and said slowly:

“Ye-es, but as a matter of fact it isn’t. I can’t tell you why: you’ll have to take that from

me.”

And then she said:

“Do you want to be like the Princesses in the books your Father used to read to you?” Princess Lily did not answer; for after Miss Thomson said that, far away, deep down,

deep down in her memory she heard her Father’s voice reading aloud to her the stories of Alcestis and of brave Imogen. She thought of all those happy evenings, when she was a little girl, when he had read to her, and when she had danced to him in the light of the hanging lamp. But then she thought of her Father, as he was now, growing old alone in his study, and of herself, shut up alone in her dismal tower. How long was it since she had heard his voice or even since she had danced a step? All this she thought of, but she did not answer Miss Thomson.

“Silence gives consent,” said that lady at last.

Then she leaned forward and, talking for a quarter of an hour in a low earnest voice, told Princess Lily what she must do if she wished to make herself once more into a real Princess.

After that, Miss Thomson departed, and as on her way home she passed the ditch where that toad was resting itself, she called out to him:

“Tonight!”

and passed on without waiting for an answer.

That night, for the first time in eight years, Princess Lily slept alone. For she had resolved to do everything that Miss Thomson had told her to do. She was frightened of being alone after dark; therefore, as soon as it grew dark, she called all her maids-in-waiting round her, and all the men-servants whose duty it was to guard the tower, and told them to go away and sleep in the Castle. She was dreadfully frightened of sleeping in a dark room, and every night for eight years had had a little night-light kept burning in her chamber, so that she could see the walls. Therefore tonight, before she went to bed, she put out that night-light. And oh, she was dreadfully, dreadfully frightened of opening her little window, for the creepers grew up to it from the ground, and she feared—she dared not say to herself what she feared. Therefore tonight she opened that little window as wide as it would go, and lay in her bed looking at the star that peeped in through it.

Sleep? She couldn’t even stop herself trembling. The darkness seemed like a black stuffy bag which someone had dropped noiselessly over her head. Over and over again she moved as though to get up and light the light, and if there had been anyone below in the tower, she would have called out for companionship. But then she would say to herself, “Hold on tight, Lily, hold on tight, and be a Princess,” and with that she would clench her fingers hard upon her thumbs, or grasp a handful of the bedclothes and cling tight to them to keep the Fear away.

And when the Fear grew almost too great to bear, and the creepers rustled in the wind, and the moaning wind flapped the curtains against the walls of the dark chamber, and the floorboards creaked as though someone were tiptoeing upstairs to her, she would give one great lonely sob and say to herself:

“They can’t do worse than kill me.” And then:

“I can only die once.”

And again:

“Death is better for me than another eight years like the last.”

Nevertheless her heart stood still, as she heard something drop down from the window- sill on to the floor of her room. For she knew, without seeing it, that it was a toad.

But when, in the darkness, Prince Peerio heard the loud thumping of her heart, a great pity for her smote him, so that he yearned to cry aloud and to speak comfortably to her. But he could not, for he could not speak at all.

Yet, amid all her terror, Princess Lily knew what she must do. And when she had kissed the toad upon its icy head, and cherished it, the moon, which had risen in the meantime behind a bank of clouds, stood forth suddenly and shone into the little room. And there was no longer any loathsome toad on her bed, but there in the middle of the chamber, his chain-mail flashing silver in the moonlight, stood a beautiful young Prince. And when she arose from her bed, he took her in his arms. Nor did Princess Lily ever know Fear again, either in the darkness or in the daytime.