But Charming had had enough of talk.  Gripping his sword firmly, he threw aside his useless cloak, dashed forward, and with a beautiful lunge pricked his enemy in the ankle.

“Victory!” he cried, waving his magic sword above his head.  “Thus is Beauty’s brother delivered!”

The Giant stared at him for a full minute.  Then he put his hands to his sides and fell back shaking in his chair.

“Her brother!” he roared.  “Well, of all the—­Her brother!” He rolled on the floor in a paroxysm of mirth.  “Her brother!  Oh, you—­You’ll kill me!  Her b-b-b-b-brother!  Her b-b-b-b—­her b-b-b —­her b-b—­”

The world suddenly seemed very cold to Charming.  He turned the ring on his finger.

“Well?” said the dwarf.

“I want,” said Charming curtly, “to be back at home, riding through the streets on my cream palfrey, amidst the cheers of the populace....  At once.”

. . . . . . .

An hour later Princess Beauty and Prince Udo, who was not her brother, gazed into each other’s eyes; and Beauty’s last illusion went.

“You’ve altered,” she said slowly.

“Yes, I’m not really much like a tortoise,” said Udo humorously.

“I meant since seven years ago.  You’re much stouter than I thought.”

“Time hasn’t exactly stood still with you, you know, Beauty.”

“Yet you saw me every day, and went on loving me.”

“Well-er—­” He shuffled his feet and looked away.

“Didn’t you?”

“Well, you see—­of course I wanted to get back, you see—­and as long as you—­I mean if we—­if you thought we were in love with each other, then, of course, you were ready to help me.  And so—­”

“You’re quite old and bald.  I can’t think why I didn’t notice it before.”

“Well, you wouldn’t when I was a tortoise,” said Udo pleasantly.  “As tortoises go I was really quite a youngster.  Besides, anyhow one never notices baldness in a tortoise.”

“I think,” said Beauty, weighing her words carefully, “I think you’ve gone off a good deal in looks in the last day or two.”

. . . . . . .

Charming was home in time for dinner; and next morning he was more popular than ever (outside his family) as he rode through the streets of the city.  But Blunderbus lay dead in his castle.  You and I know that he was killed by the magic sword; yet somehow a strange legend grew up around his death.  And ever afterwards in that country, when one man told his neighbour a more than ordinarily humorous anecdote, the latter would cry, in between the gusts of merriment, “Don’t!  You’ll make me die of laughter!” And then he would pull himself together, and add with a sigh—­“Like Blunderbus.”

AN ODD LOT

THE COMING OF THE CROCUS

“It’s a bootiful day again, Sir,” said my gardener, James, looking in at the study window.