But that morning she sat on the bed in her petticoats with the blanket about her shoulders, dipping bread into some milk she had warmed up, as Cobweb sat in a single sunbeam and looked picturesque, and she continued:
“I have hit upon a plan that I think is quite clever, Cobweb—really quite clever; so please don’t criticise it before you hear the end.” (Cobweb did this a lot.) “But before I start, I would like to say: It is getting colder.”
“Yes,” said Cobweb.
“Would it be worth my while to wish for clothes, do you think?”
“As none of your other wishes have come true, no,” said Cobweb, “especially since I am not a haberdasher. I’m a full-time bottom-of-the-garden fairy and an amateur chemist. Do please try to keep that straight in your head.”
“Something will come along somehow,” said Floralinda, “but until then, I am obliged to be in my petticoat, and I have noticed that your clothes have never recovered, and are falling off.”
For this was so, the clothes having been rose-petals and spider-silk, the latter of which was famous for strength but not much for modesty.
“I think we ought to make some clothes,” Floralinda said, “for us both; I had the idea this morning, but then I had a truly terrible thought, because, Cobweb—are you a boy—or a girl?”
The fairy looked at Floralinda as though she had taken leave of her senses, but since Cobweb looked at Floralinda this way about sixteen times an hour, this did not make her quake as it had done in the beginning. At any rate, Cobweb had such a beautiful face for being contemptuous with that it was difficult to keep one’s feelings straight. Even when it screwed its face up in horrified thought, as it did right then, the effect was very nice.
“Must I be either? It sounds tedious.”
“I thought all fairies were girls; there’s always a fairy-queen; but then again, there’s Robin Goodfellow. Oh dear, how confusing!”
“If the fairy-queen chose to be a girl, then that is her particular cross to bear,” said Cobweb. “I don’t see why I should put myself out.”
“But you see, I wouldn’t know what to do about clothes, so do decide,” said Floralinda.
Cobweb mulled it over.
“Whichever one is superior,” they said eventually. “I have no interest in trading down, so please give me the one that is better to have.”
“Oh, but it doesn’t work that way at all,” protested Floralinda, at the same time suffering a guilty pang that she was not really communicating all the facts. “There’s advantages and disadvantages to both. Boys seem to have lots of good times, but they’re often obliged to be killed; girls don’t have as many good times, I believe, but they have lovely hair.”
“Then I really don’t have a preference, and indeed I don’t care,” said Cobweb, picking minute pieces of pith out of its fingernails.
“Well,” said the princess eagerly, setting down her bread and leaning in, “would you mind terribly being a girl fairy? I’ve always hated dressing boy dolls, and I don’t like sewing hems on trousers. I also think it would be more polite, because there’s only this room and I’ve had to get dressed and undressed already. I really don’t think it would be altogether nice if you were a boy fairy the whole time. At first I thought you might be a boy fairy, because I didn’t like you very much; but now that I like you a bit better, I’d prefer if you were a girl,” she finished.
“Then I will be a girl, though I really can’t say that I’m interested,” said Cobweb, who had just entered herself into a bondage that she had very little idea about, which was perhaps quite cruel on Floralinda’s part. “But I don’t care for made clothes. When the time comes I’ll dress in some of the full moon’s beams, which have the benefit of being attractive as well as cheap.”
“That does sound sweet, but it’s too far away; it’s not polite of you to go naked now,” said Floralinda, promptly proving the difficulties of Eve. “But you haven’t heard my plan, and I’m quite proud of it. Dear little Cobweb” (you see attitudes change immediately), “the witch has put a different dreadful creature on each level of the tower.”
“So you’ve told me,” said the fairy. “I frankly wish they’d all go hang together. I’ve never heard such bellows as from the dragon with the diamond scales. Some creatures think they can do exactly as they like.”
“But don’t you see,” said Floralinda, growing quite excited, “it has now been ages since the witch made this tower, and surely none of them have been fed, because the goblins were so excited to see my loaves? All I have to do is wait until they die of starvation, which I’m sure some of them have done already, and then I can simply go downstairs and leave. The dragon has probably survived due to all those princes, but there haven’t been any in simply forever.”
This had been quite a difficult idea for Princess Floralinda to come up with, which was why it was really wretched when the fairy looked up at her and said, “Why, you fool! Nobody needs to eat in here.”
“What?” said Floralinda.
“There’s a spell on the whole tower,” said Cobweb. “Nothing here will ever die from not having enough food. The witch would have been bankrupted with feeding you all otherwise.”
“But I’ve been so hungry,” said Floralinda, falteringly.
“That’s the problem with spells like these,” said the fairy. “A dumb animal gets hungry, but it won’t know it’s meant to be dead, so it’ll just carry on looking for food ad infinitum. Human beings know that if they don’t eat they’ll starve, and so eventually they’ll convince themselves they’re starving and die when they don’t have to, all due to instinct. I expect that’s why the witch gave you the food, now that I think about it. A princess is not exactly the type of person with a great deal of mental fortitude. I had assumed that she was filling you up as a side-bet in case this tower wheeze didn’t work; but I never heard of a witch who’d fatten up a princess rather than a good stupid child. You’re mostly hair and eyes…Good grief! You really didn’t know? I would have experimented, first thing, and not eaten for a week, to see if I died.”
“But the goblins ate up everything,” pleaded Floralinda, and Cobweb said: “Goblins eat as a hobby. Dear, dear! You really know nothing about anything.”
At which point the princess became very disheartened, so much so that Cobweb said grudgingly, “It wouldn’t have been the stupidest plan, if not for that. But it wouldn’t have worked all the way down anyhow. Dragons, for instance, merely hibernate when there is a scarcity of food, and don’t die for centuries.”
“But now I shall never get out,” said Floralinda, in tears, “there is no solution to my problem that isn’t a prince, and I’m all out of princes, and I don’t want to jump out the window and die. This is the worst conundrum I ever heard of.”
This was always a good tack to take with Cobweb. The fairy loved to think about solutions of all kinds: either the ones to riddles or cross-words, or the type of thing you got in a pan once you boiled it too much. She stretched out languorously in her sunbeam (though now that she was a girl, Floralinda thought Cobweb ought to look as though she were enjoying herself a bit less) and said—