wine, and she and Gaspar went back to the village to paint their own
pictures, leaving the little magician to crack his nuts and look into
his show box as long as he pleased.



THE VIOLET FLAME


Rosamond was the child of a village blacksmith, and of a lady said by
the villagers to be a princess from a far land. She herself claimed to
be descended from an Ocean Queen; but no one believed that, except her
little girl, who thought her mother must know best. Rosamond would sit
by her for hours, gazing into the river that flowed through their
garden, and listening to her mothers stories of golden palaces beneath
the water. But she also liked to pry about her father's forge, and
wonder at the quick sparks and great roaring fires. Her cousin Alfred
would stay there with her, but while she was watching the red glow of
the fire and the heavy fall of her father's hammer, he was gazing upon
the violet flame that flickered above her forehead.

One day, when she was playing with him in the picture gallery of the
old castle, in which his mother was housekeeper, she called him to
look at the portrait of a child daintily holding a bird on the tip of
her finger, and arrayed in the quaint richness of the old-fashioned
costume. "She looks like you," her cousin said, "only she has not a
little trembling flame upon her forehead."

"Have I a flame upon my forehead?" asked Rosamond, wondering.