hold her foot when she mounted, they always saw when they reached
her, that she wasn't there.

But she was here! I had seen her only a few times, but this was
the Pryor girl, just as sure as I would have known if it had been
Sally. What dazed me was that she answered in every particular
the description Laddie had given me of the Queen's daughter. And
worst of all, from the day she first came among us, moving so
proud and cold, blabbing old Hannah Dover said she carried
herself like a Princess--as if Hannah Dover knew HOW a Princess
carried herself!--every living soul, my father even, had called
her the Princess. At first it was because she was like they
thought a Princess would be, but later they did it in meanness,
to make fun. After they knew her name, they were used to calling
her the Princess, so they kept it up, but some of them were
secretly proud of her; because she could look, and do, and be
what they would have given anything to, and knew they couldn't to
save them.

I was never in such a fix in all my life. She looked more as
Laddie had said the Princess would than you would have thought
any woman could, but she was Pamela Pryor, nevertheless. Every
one called her the Princess, but she couldn't make reality out of
that. She just couldn't be the Fairy Queen's daughter; so the
letter couldn't possibly be for her.

She had no business in our woods; you could see that they had
plenty of their own. She went straight to the door of the willow
room and walked in as if she belonged there. What if she found
the hollow and took Laddie's letter! Fast as I could slip over