Page 17 - The Green Beaubird

away, and before the king had been gone many
days (as Chiaretta when she was a virgin had
pledged) three lovely children, two boys and a
girl, were born. Likewise their hair was braided
below their shoulders, and they bore golden
chains on their necks and golden stars on their
foreheads. The queen-mother, whose hatred
against Chiaretta burned as malignantly as ever,

no sooner cast her eyes upon the innocent
children than she determined to have them put
away privily, so that no one might know they had
even been, and that Chiaretta might be disgraced
in the sight of the king. And besides this, Brunora
and Lionella had grown to regard their sister
with violent hate and jealousy since she had

become their sovereign, and lost no chance to
aggravate, by all sorts of cunning wiles, the spite
of the queen-mother against Chiaretta. On the
very same day that the queen was delivered, it
chanced that there were born in the stable-yard
three black mongrel pups, two dogs and a bitch,
which, by some strange freak, had white stars on
their foreheads and bore round their necks traces
of a gorget. This coming to the knowledge of the

two sisters, they took the pups away from the
dam and brought them ______

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