Every day, now, one or more of them left home
and disappeared among the grass and flowers below. Cucu imagined them as
traveling off around the garden, but if he had seen them lying half
buried in the earth, their bright brown faces dirty and streaked with
tears, their merry little hearts nearly broken with woe, he would not
have envied them so much.
Day after day passed, and the month of October came with its clear and
cool nights. Queen Cucurbita did not relish this at all, and, every
morning, when the sun peeped at her, he wondered how he ever could have
admired such a dried-up yellow old creature. Cucu's heart, on the
contrary, grew happier all the time, he lifted up his heavy head that
seemed to be lighter each day, and when the wind blew, he rattled
against the trellis and wondered how it was he could move so easily.
"Poor Prince!" the Cat-bird whistled, as she perched above him, "your
face is getting as brown and shining as one of those little Filberts,
your cap is no longer green and pretty, and you look so light that a
breath might blow you away."
"I don't care," returned Cucu, "for I feel delighted, and so long as I
can't see my own face, what's the odds?"
The next night was clear and very cold. The people to whom the garden
belonged brought out sheets and covered over the tender heliotropes and
other flowers they valued, but they couldn't have cared much for Queen
Cucurbita, for they never gave her a thought.
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