Then I set one foot on the arch of the Princess' instep and held up my hands.

One second I thought she would not lift me, the next I was on her level and her lips met mine in a touch like velvet woven from threads of flame.

Then with a turn of her stout little wrist, she dropped me, and a streak went up our road.

Nothing so amazing and so important ever had happened to me.
It was an occasion that demanded something unusual.

To cry, "Praise the Lord!" was only to repeat an hourly phrase at our house; this demanded something out of the ordinary, so I said just exactly as father did the day the brown mare balked with the last load of seed clover, when a big storm was breaking--"Jupiter Ammon!" When I had calmed down so I could, I climbed the fence, and reached through a crack for the pie.