So this saved a world
of trouble; for if some wrinkled old maid should say, "And that
happened long ago, some time before I was born," all her gossips
laughed, and cried out, "Ho! ho! there's a historian! do we not all
know you were a born Allia, ten years before that date?"--and then
the old maid was put to shame.
Now it happened well for Queen Lura's lovely daughter, that on her
birth-month was written the gracious name of Maya, for it seemed
well to fit her grace and delicacy, while but few in that country
knew its sad Oriental depth, or that it had any meaning at all.
It was all one flush of dawn upon Sunrise Hills, when the
maids-of-honor, in curls and white frocks, began to strew the great
Hall of Amethyst with geranium leaves, and arrange light tripods of
gold for the fairies, who were that day gathered from all
Larrierepensee to see and gift the new princess. The Queen had
written notes to them on spicy magnolia-petals, and now the
head-nurse and the grand-equerry wheeled her couch of state into the
Hall of Amethyst, that she might receive the tender wishes of the
good fairies, while yet the sweet languor of her motherhood kept her
from the fresh wind and bright dew out of doors.
The couch of state was fashioned like a great rose of crimson velvet;
only where there should have been the gold anthers of the flower lay
the lovely Queen, wrapped in a mantle of canary-birds' down, and
nested on one arm slept the Child of the Kingdom, Maya.
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