“Why, little boy,” she said, as she took Arthur’s hand and led him away from in front of the horses, “don’t you know that you came very near being run over? and that it is dangerous to be playing out here in the middle of the road? Now run into the house, and ask your mother to brush your clothes, and don’t ever do so again.”
[Illustration: PRINCE DUSTY AND HIS FAIRY GODMOTHER. (_Page 8._)]
“But I don’t live here,” said Arthur, lifting his dust-covered little face to the gracious one bent down to him. “I live a long way off, and I’m a Prince, and Cynthia is a Princess, and we were looking for adventures, when a big dog knocked me down; but he didn’t hurt Cynthia, because I defended her, the same as princes do in the stories my own mamma used to read to me.”
“So you are a Prince, are you?” laughed the lady; “then you must be ‘Prince Dusty.’ Well, if you will get into my carriage, and show me the way, I will take you home to your castle. But where is your Princess? What did you say her name was?”
“It is Cynthia,” replied Arthur, “and there she comes now.”
As he spoke, poor, terrified little Cynthia came timidly out from the bushes where she had been hiding, and crying with fright, for the last three minutes.
Then the beautiful lady took them both into her carriage, and ordered the coachman to drive on, while she soothed and comforted the children, and wiped Arthur’s dusty face with her own embroidered handkerchief.
She looked curiously at him when he told her that his name was Arthur Dale Dustin, that his dearest mamma and papa were dead, and that he used to live in New York, but that now he lived with Cynthia’s father and mother, who were his Uncle John and Aunt Nancy. She asked him several questions about himself; but always seemed to forget his name and only called him “Prince Dusty.”
When they reached the Dustin house she kissed both the children good-bye, and gave Arthur a beautiful copy of Hans Christian Andersen’s “Fairy Tales,” that she had in the carriage with her. On the fly-leaf she wrote, with a tiny gold pencil that hung from her watch-chain: “To Prince Dusty from his Fairy Godmother.” Then she said she must hurry on, and drove away, leaving the children standing by the roadside and staring after the carriage so long as the faintest cloud of dust from its wheels was visible.