Dorothy displayed the cushion; the princess laughed.
"It is quite a joke, is it not?" said she. "That cushion is for me to
sleep on, and it is made out of one of my own dresses. The ladies have
bought it for me. I have heard them talking about it. How do you fare,
Dorothy, and how is your grandmother?"
Then Dorothy told the princess how the grandmother sat in the cushioned
chair in the sunny window and knitted the silk stocking, and how she
herself was to be married the next week to the little boy who had lived
next door, but was now grown up and come a-wooing.
"Where is his grandmother?" asked the princess.
Dorothy replied that she was to live with them, and that there was
already another cushioned chair in a sunny window, another bombazine
dress and lace cap, and a silk stocking, in readiness, and that both
grandmothers were to sit and knit in peace during the rest of their
lives.
"Ah, well," said the princess, with a sigh, "if I were only back in
Persia I would buy you a wedding present, but I do not know when that
will be--the ladies are so kind."
Dorothy ventured to inquire if the princess had found her brother, the
Maltese prince.
"Dear me, yes," replied the princess. "Why, he lives in this very house.
He is out in the back parlor asleep on the sofa, this minute. Brother,
dear brother, come here a second, I pray!"
With that a Maltese prince, with a long, aristocratic face, and
beautiful, serious eyes, entered with a slow and stately tread.
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