Add files from ibiblio as of 2025-03-08 21:40:33HEADmain

1 files changed, 4074 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/40573-0.txt b/40573-0.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d507bdd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/40573-0.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,4074 @@
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 40573 ***
+
+The Other Side of the Sun
+
+
+
+
+  _Uniform with this
+  BY THE SAME AUTHOR._
+
+
+WYMPS, AND OTHER FAIRY TALES. Illustrated by Mrs. PERCY DEARMER.
+
+Miss SHARP has wit, wisdom, and imagination for her initial equipment,
+but she possesses also what is rarer far--the accent and the point of
+view. For instance, she would never introduce a bicycle into this
+old-fashioned country. She knows perfectly well that if there should be
+any occasion for hurry--which is rarely the case in Fairyland--naturally
+you take a rocking-horse.--_The Academy._
+
+
+ALL THE WAY TO FAIRYLAND. Illustrated by Mrs. PERCY DEARMER.
+
+Far and away the best fairy tales are the old traditional stories of
+Cinderella; Jack and the Beanstalk, and others. To these we add the
+stories of Hans Andersen and Grimm; and now room must be made in that
+select company for the tales of EVELYN SHARP.--_The St. James' Gazette._
+
+
+_ALSO_
+
+  AT THE RELTON ARMS. A novel.
+  THE MAKING OF A PRIG. A novel.
+  THE MAKING OF A SCHOOL GIRL.
+
+
+JOHN LANE, LONDON AND NEW YORK.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+  The Other Side of the Sun
+
+  _Fairy Stories_
+  BY EVELYN SHARP
+
+  _Illustrated_
+  BY NELLIE SYRETT
+
+  JOHN LANE
+  THE BODLEY HEAD
+  LONDON AND NEW YORK
+  1900
+
+
+
+
+  COPYRIGHT, 1899, BY
+  JOHN LANE
+
+
+  University Press
+
+  JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A.
+
+
+
+
+  _TO_
+  ALL THE CHILDREN I KNOW
+  ON
+  THIS SIDE OF THE SUN
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+
+  CHAPTER                                                        PAGE
+
+     I. THE WEIRD WITCH OF THE WILLOW-HERB                          3
+
+    II. THE MAGICIAN'S TEA-PARTY                                   25
+
+   III. THE HUNDREDTH PRINCESS                                     49
+
+    IV. SOMEBODY ELSE'S PRINCE                                     71
+
+     V. THE TEARS OF PRINCESS PRUNELLA                            103
+
+    VI. THE PALACE ON THE FLOOR                                   129
+
+   VII. THE LADY DAFFODILIA                                       147
+
+  VIII. THE KITE THAT WENT TO THE MOON                            163
+
+
+
+
+The Weird Witch of the Willow-Herb
+
+
+The Weird Witch of the Willow-Herb lived in a pink cottage on the top of
+a hill. She was merry and beautiful and wise and kind; and she was all
+dressed in pink and green, and she had great eyes that were sometimes
+filled with laughter and sometimes filled with tears, and her round soft
+mouth looked as though it had done nothing but smile for hundreds and
+hundreds of years. Her pink cottage was the most charming place in the
+world to live in; the walls were made of the flower of the willow-herb,
+and the roof was made of the green leaves, and the floors were made of
+the white down; and all the little lattice windows were cobwebs, spun by
+the spiders who live in Fairyland and make the windows for the Fairy
+Queen's own palace. And no one but a wymp or a fairy could have said how
+long the Weird Witch of the Willow-Herb had been living in her cottage
+on the top of the hill.
+
+Now, any one might think that this wonderful Witch was so sweet and so
+wise that all sorts of people would be coming, all day long, to ask her
+to help them; for, of course, that is what a witch is for. But this
+particular Witch, who lived in her pink cottage on the top of the hill,
+had not been living there all that time for nothing.
+
+"If I did not keep a few spells lying about at the bottom of the hill, I
+should never have a moment's peace," chuckled the Witch of the
+Willow-Herb. And that is why most of the people who came to ask her for
+spells never got so far as the pink cottage at all, for they found what
+they wanted at the bottom of the hill; and no doubt that saved everybody
+a great deal of trouble.
+
+"Poor people!" said the Weird Witch, with her voice full of kindness;
+"why should I make them climb up all this way, just to see me?"
+
+Sometimes, however, it did happen that somebody got to the top of the
+hill; or else it is clear that this story would never have been written.
+For, one day, as the Witch sat on the doorstep of her pink cottage,
+looking out over the world with her great eyes that saw everything, the
+little Princess Winsome came running up the white path that twisted
+round and round and up and up until it reached the cottage at the top;
+and she did not stop running until she stood in front of the Weird Witch
+herself. She looked as though she must have come along in a great hurry,
+for she had lost one of her shoes on the way and there was quite an
+important scratch on her dimpled chin; but, of course, it is difficult
+to walk sedately when one is going to call on a witch.
+
+"I am Princess Winsome," she announced, as soon as she had breath enough
+to speak.
+
+"To be sure you are," smiled the Weird Witch, who knew that before; "and
+you have run away from home because--"
+
+"Because I want to find the bravest boy in the world," interrupted the
+Princess, who never liked to let anybody else do the talking.
+
+"Are they all cowards in your country, then?" asked the Witch.
+
+"Oh no," answered Princess Winsome; "the boys in my country are so brave
+that it is no fun playing with them. They stop all the games by fighting
+about nothing at all; and it's dreadfully dull when you're a girl, isn't
+it?"
+
+"Perhaps it is," smiled the Witch. "Then why are you looking for the
+bravest boy of all?"
+
+"Ah," said the little Princess, wisely, "the bravest boy of all would
+never fight unless there was a reason, you see; and so we should have
+lots of time to play. But how am I to find him?"
+
+"The only way to find him is to let him find you," said the Weird Witch;
+"and the best thing I can do for you is to shut you up in the middle of
+an enchanted forest, where no one but the bravest boy in the world would
+ever come to find any one. Now, make haste, or you won't get there in
+time!"
+
+And the Princess with the scratch on her chin must certainly have made
+haste, for she had quite disappeared by the time the Witch's next
+visitor came up the winding white path; and that happened the very next
+minute. This time it was a boy who came along,--a tall, strong,
+jolly-looking boy, with his hands in his pockets and his cap at the back
+of his head, whistling a strange wild tune that was made up of all the
+songs of all the birds in the air, so that, as he whistled it, every
+bird for miles round stopped to listen.
+
+"I am Kit the Coward," he said, pulling off his cap to the Witch.
+
+"To be sure you are," smiled the Weird Witch, who knew that too; "and
+you have run away from home because the other boys called you a coward,
+and you want to show them that you are as brave as they are, only you
+won't fight without a reason. Isn't that it?"
+
+"Of course it is," answered Kit, who liked to have _his_ talking done
+for him; "but how shall I find something worth fighting about?"
+
+"That is not difficult," said the Weird Witch. "All you have to do is to
+go to the court of King Hurlyburly, and ask him to give you something
+brave to do. The King is always going to war about something, so you
+will soon have as much fighting as you want. Now, be off with you, or
+else someone will get there before you!"
+
+"All right," said Kit. "Which is the way?"
+
+"Any way you like," laughed the Weird Witch.
+
+"But in what direction?" asked Kit.
+
+"It doesn't matter," laughed the Weird Witch.
+
+So Kit made her another bow and marched away again down the hill-side,
+whistling the same tune as before; and all the birds of the air came
+flying along when they heard it, and they flew in front of him to show
+him the way, and he followed them over meadows and streams and orchards
+and cornfields, until they brought him to the walls of King Hurlyburly's
+city. And they would not have left him then, if he had not pointed out
+to them, most politely, that although it was very obliging of them to
+have come so far with him, he would find it a little inconvenient to
+travel any further with so many companions. So they flew away again; and
+Kit marched into the city and up to the gates of the King's palace.
+
+"I have come to fight for the King," said Kit, when the guards came out
+and asked him what he wanted. And he looked such a fine strong fellow,
+that they took him at once to the King.
+
+"You have come in the very nick of time," said King Hurlyburly, "for the
+Commander-in-Chief of the royal forces has overslept himself so often
+that I had him beheaded this morning before he was awake. The army is in
+consequence without a head as well as the Commander-in-Chief; so if you
+will become their General and invade the country of my neighbour King
+Topsyturvy, I shall be much obliged to you."
+
+"Why have I got to invade the country of King Topsyturvy?" demanded Kit.
+
+The King pushed his crown on one side, which he always did when he felt
+puzzled. "Now you come to mention it," he said, "I believe there _was_ a
+reason, but for the life of me I can't remember what it was. However,
+the reason is of no importance--"
+
+"Oh yes, it is," interrupted Kit. "I can't possibly fight without a
+reason, you know."
+
+"That's awkward," said King Hurlyburly. "Perhaps the army will know."
+And he sent a message round to the barracks to ask the soldiers why they
+were going to war. But although the soldiers were all ready to begin
+fighting, they had not the least idea what the war was about. So the
+King's crown became more crooked than before.
+
+"Won't it do if you invent a reason?" he asked Kit, for he could not
+help thinking how nice it would be to stay at home while his soldiers
+were being led to war by someone else. "You may marry the Princess
+Winsome if you come back victorious," he added as an afterthought.
+
+But Kit only shook his head. He had never heard of the Princess Winsome,
+and he was not going to fight anybody without a very good reason for
+it.
+
+Then King Hurlyburly had a brilliant idea. "Go and declare war on the
+enemy, to begin with," he said; "and perhaps _they_ will remember the
+reason."
+
+There was certainly no harm in declaring war; so Kit rode off at once on
+one of the King's fastest horses, and arrived the next morning at the
+court of King Topsyturvy, just as his Majesty was sitting down to
+breakfast.
+
+"I have come from King Hurlyburly to declare war," said Kit, who always
+went straight to the point.
+
+"What for?" asked King Topsyturvy.
+
+"I don't know," said Kit. "That's what I want you to tell me."
+
+The King ate two eggs before he replied.
+
+"Well," he said presently, "I believe I said Hurlyburly was a shocking
+old muddler. I suppose that's it. All right! When do you want to begin?"
+
+"I don't want to begin at all," answered Kit. "Why did you say he was a
+muddler?"
+
+"Oh, just to make conversation," said King Topsyturvy, helping himself
+to marmalade.
+
+"Then you don't really think he is an old muddler?" asked Kit.
+
+"Dear me, no," said King Topsyturvy. "I never think."
+
+"Then write that down on a piece of paper, and there needn't be a war at
+all!" cried Kit.
+
+The King stroked his beard. "Perhaps there needn't," he agreed. "But I
+never write."
+
+"I do, though," said Kit, who had learned to write while all the other
+boys were making catapults; "you've only got to sign your name here."
+
+King Topsyturvy stopped eating his breakfast, just long enough to sign
+the beautiful apology Kit had written on a sheet of note-paper; and then
+Kit jumped on his horse again and rode back to the palace of King
+Hurlyburly.
+
+"Well," said his Majesty, "did you discover the reason?"
+
+"There wasn't a reason, and there isn't going to be a war," answered
+Kit; and he held out the beautifully written apology from King
+Topsyturvy.
+
+"What!" cried his Majesty, in alarm. "Do you mean to say you've stopped
+the war?"
+
+"Of course I have," said Kit. "And I have come back victorious, as you
+see. Didn't you say something about a Princess?"
+
+"But," stammered the King, "how am I to appease the army? The army has
+set its heart on a war."
+
+"So had I," answered Kit, sadly; "but I never can find anything worth
+fighting about. Meanwhile, where is the Princess?"
+
+"You have not won the Princess," said King Hurlyburly, who was now
+thoroughly cross. "I believe you are a miserable coward!"
+
+"That is what the other boys say," answered Kit, smiling. "It is not my
+fault that there is nothing to fight about. Will you please send for the
+Princess?"
+
+"The Princess has run away from home, so I can't send for her," said the
+King, irritably. "She is shut up in an enchanted forest, and surrounded
+with wild beasts and magic spells and giants. It is not at all a nice
+place for a Princess to be in, but how am I to get her away?"
+
+"Why," exclaimed Kit, laughing, "here is something for your army to do.
+Let it go and rescue the Princess."
+
+"Nothing would induce the army to go near the place," explained the
+King, sorrowfully; "the army is too much afraid of being bewitched."
+
+"Hurrah!" shouted Kit, laughing more than ever. "At last I have found
+something brave to do! _I_ will go and rescue the Princess."
+
+So Kit the Coward started out on his travels once more; and no sooner
+did he get outside the city gates than he began to whistle his wonderful
+tune, and down swept all the birds of the air in hundreds, and they flew
+in front of him as before and led him to the very edge of the enchanted
+forest. There they left him, for no one can help anybody to go through
+an enchanted forest, and Kit knew fast enough that he must find the
+Princess by himself. He was not a bit afraid, though, and he plunged
+straight into the wood without looking back.
+
+He had not taken two steps before he had completely lost himself. The
+trees were so thick overhead that not a streak of sunshine was able to
+get through, and the forest was so full of wild beasts that it was
+impossible to walk five yards without tumbling over a lion or a bear.
+But this did not frighten Kit at all, for he had learned to talk the
+language of the woods all the time that the other boys were knocking one
+another on the head; and so he soon made friends with every animal in
+the forest, and they told him the best places to find apples and nuts
+and blackberries, and the bees brought him the very best honey they
+could make, and he grew so happy and so contented that he quite forgot
+he was enchanted and could not escape if he wanted to.
+
+But it is impossible to be happy for long when one is bewitched; and,
+one day, Kit found himself in a part of the forest that was more
+horrible and more frightening than any dark passage that was ever
+invented on the way to any nursery. It was not only dark, but it was
+strangely silent as well; and a curious feeling of gloom and unhappiness
+suddenly crept over Kit. If it had been a nice sort of silence, the sort
+we find when we get away from the other boys and girls into a place
+where it is quiet enough to hear the real sounds of the air, Kit would
+still have been quite happy; but here there was nothing to be heard at
+all, not even the brushing of the leaves, nor the blooming of the
+flowers, nor the growing of the grass. But the most frightening thing of
+all was when he clapped his hands together and stamped as hard as he
+could on the ground, for not a sound did he make; and when he tried to
+speak, he found he could only whisper; and when he burst out laughing,
+he made no more noise than if he had been smiling. Still, he kept his
+wits about him, for, of course, there was the Princess to be rescued,
+and at last he thought of trying to whistle. At first he could not make
+a note sound in the stillness, but he went on trying until the wonderful
+tune he had learned long ago from the birds themselves began to echo
+once more through the silent forest.
+
+He did not get an answer at once, for really nice birds cannot be
+expected to go out of their way to a place where there is no sunshine
+and the flowers cannot enter into conversation with them; but after a
+while a very fat blackbird, who certainly had impudence enough for
+anything, came hopping along from branch to branch until he landed on
+Kit's shoulder, and with him came sunshine and sound and merriment into
+the very heart of the melancholy forest, for none of these things are
+ever far off when a blackbird is near. Kit gave a shout of joy and
+hastened after the blackbird, who was hopping along the ground in front
+of him; and the next minute he found himself standing in a blaze of
+sunlight in front of a high stone wall. Beyond the wall he could see the
+tall towers of a great castle; but he did not trouble himself much about
+the other side of the wall, for on the top of it, with the sunshine
+pouring all over her, sat the most charming little girl he had ever
+seen.
+
+She had lost one of her shoes, and there was the faintest sign of a
+scratch on her round, dimpled chin, and her long black hair flowed round
+her shoulders in a way that some people might have called untidy; but
+Kit was sure, directly he saw her, that she had come straight out of
+Fairyland, and he was too amazed even to make her a bow.
+
+"Dear me! What are you doing here?" asked the girl, in a tone of great
+surprise.
+
+Kit took a step nearer the wall, and pulled off his cap. Her voice
+reminded him that, although she belonged to Fairyland, she was still a
+little girl and would expect him to remember his manners. "I have come
+to rescue the Princess," he said. "Can you tell me where she is?"
+
+"She lives in the castle over there," answered the girl. "What are you
+going to do when you have rescued her?"
+
+"Well, I suppose I shall ask her to marry me," said Kit. "Do you think
+she will?"
+
+"Ah," she replied gravely, "that depends on whether you have _my_
+permission. Tell me who you are, to begin with."
+
+"I am Kit the Coward," he said simply; and he stared when she broke into
+the merriest peal of laughter imaginable.
+
+"What nonsense!" she cried. "If you were a coward, you would never have
+got here at all."
+
+"Is that true?" asked Kit eagerly. "Then do you think the Princess
+_will_ marry me?"
+
+The girl looked down at him for a moment, with her untidy little head on
+one side. Then she bent and held out her two hands to him. "I think,
+perhaps, the Princess will," she said softly. "If you will help me down
+from this enormous high wall, we will go and ask her."
+
+So Kit lifted her down from the wall, which was quite an easy matter,
+for it was in reality no higher than he was and the little girl was
+certainly the lightest weight he had ever held in his arms. "What are
+you looking for?" he asked, when he had set her on the ground, for she
+was kneeling down and turning over the dry leaves in a most distressed
+manner.
+
+"I am looking for my crown, of course," she said with a pout; "it
+tumbled off my head just before you came, and I was too frightened to
+jump all that long way to find it."
+
+"Here it is," said Kit; and he picked up the little glittering crown and
+set it gently on the top of her beautiful, rumpled hair. Then he started
+back in surprise. "You are the Princess!" he shouted.
+
+"Of course I am," laughed Princess Winsome, putting her hand in his;
+"_I_ knew that, all the time! Shall we go home now?"
+
+Kit did not reply immediately, for no one can do two things at once, and
+it took him quite a long time to kiss the small soft hand that lay in
+his own big one. And as for going home, when they did start they did not
+get very far; for it must not be forgotten that they were still in an
+enchanted forest, and it is easier to get into an enchanted forest than
+to get out of it again. However, as they had everything in the world to
+talk about, they would probably have been most annoyed if they had found
+their way instead of losing it; so they just went on losing it as
+happily as possible, until they could not walk another step because an
+immense giant was occupying the whole of the roadway. There he sat,
+smoking a great pipe that looked like a chimney-pot that wanted
+sweeping; and when the Princess saw him, she was so frightened that she
+hid herself behind Kit and peeped under his arm to see what was going to
+happen.
+
+"Hullo!" said the giant, in a huge voice that made the grass stand on
+end with fright, just as it does after a hoar-frost; "what's this?
+You're running away with the Princess!"
+
+"To be sure I am," said Kit; "and if you don't let me pass, I shall have
+to kill you."
+
+"Oh, dear," sighed the giant, raising a wind that made the trees shiver
+for miles round. "They all say that, and there's no peace for a poor
+giant now-a-days. When I was a boy, the Prince was always put under a
+spell as well as the Princess. However, I suppose I must make an end of
+you, if you are determined to fight."
+
+And he laid down his pipe and rose most unwillingly to his feet.
+
+Kit laughed out loud with gladness, for at last he had found a good
+reason for a fight, and no one would be able to call him a coward any
+more. But before there was time to strike a single blow, the giant gave
+a loud howl of alarm, took to his heels, and in another moment was
+completely out of sight. Kit turned in amazement to his little Princess;
+and then he saw what had frightened the giant, for all the animals of
+the forest, all the lions and the tigers and the bears and the wolves,
+stood there in rows, waiting to help him. So there is no doubt that that
+giant would have been killed by somebody if he had not run away.
+
+"Isn't it wonderful?" said the little Princess, in a whisper.
+
+But Kit covered his face with his hands. "It is no use," he said in a
+disappointed tone; "the other boys will never believe that I am not a
+coward."
+
+Princess Winsome came and pulled his hands away and laughed softly. "_I_
+think you are the bravest boy in the world," she said.
+
+"Of course he is!" chuckled a voice somewhere near. "How stupid some
+people are, to be sure!" And there sat the Weird Witch under a tree, all
+in her pink and green gown, with her great eyes brimful of fun and
+nonsense. And as the boy and girl stood hand in hand before her and
+caught the glance of her beautiful witch's eyes, all sorts of muddles
+fell out of their heads, and they began to understand everything that
+had been puzzling them for years and years and years. That only shows
+what a witch can do when she is the right sort of witch!
+
+"Dear little Princess," cried Kit, "it doesn't matter whether the other
+boys believe me or not, so long as _you_ know I am not a coward."
+
+"Besides," added Princess Winsome, "we are not going to try to make
+anybody believe anything. I think we'll stay here, instead, for ever and
+ever and always."
+
+"A very good idea," smiled the Weird Witch of the Willow-Herb, as she
+nodded at them both. "Always remain enchanted if you can."
+
+So they had the nicest and the funniest wedding possible, on the spot;
+and there was no time wasted in sending out invitations, for all the
+guests were already waiting there in rows--with the exception of the
+singing-birds; and Kit very soon summoned them by whistling a few notes
+of his wonderful tune. The Princess laid her own wedding-breakfast under
+the trees, and the wedding-guests helped her by bringing her everything
+that was nice to eat in the forest, such as roasted chestnuts and
+preserved fruits and truffles and barley-sugar-cane, and lots of
+dewdrops and honey-drops and pear-drops; and the Weird Witch completed
+the feast by turning a piece of rock that nobody wanted into a
+wedding-cake, and every one will agree that it is better for a rock to
+turn into a wedding-cake than for a wedding-cake to turn into a rock.
+And all the flowers came of their own accord and arranged themselves on
+the table, which they certainly did much more prettily than anybody else
+could have done it for them; and when the wedding was over they just
+walked away again instead of stopping until they were dead, which of
+course is what they would have done at any other wedding. And although
+the bride had lost her other shoe by the time she was ready to be
+married, and although her beautiful hair was more untidy than ever and
+her crown had tumbled off again and had to be brought to her by an
+obliging lion, Kit never noticed any of these things and only felt quite
+certain that he was marrying somebody who had come right out of
+Fairyland and was not an ordinary Princess at all. No doubt, it was
+because he was in an enchanted forest that he made such a mistake; and
+no doubt, it is because he has never been disenchanted since that he is
+making the same mistake to this day.
+
+As for the Weird Witch of the Willow-Herb, she went back to her pink
+cottage on the top of the hill, so as to be ready to make the next
+person happy who came up the white winding path. But before she went,
+she took care that all the singing-birds should fly back to Kit's home
+and tell the other boys how brave he had been, which they did with the
+greatest pleasure imaginable. It is said that the story became slightly
+exaggerated; but when we know how much one little bird can tell, it is
+not difficult to imagine the kind of story that could be told by
+hundreds and hundreds of little birds.
+
+
+
+
+The Magician's Tea-Party
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+Little King Wistful slipped through the palace gates and went out into
+his kingdom to look for something new. He was only eight years old, so
+he was not a very big King; but he had been King as long as he could
+remember, and he had been looking for something new the whole time. Now,
+his kingdom was entirely made of islands, and in the days when the old
+King and Queen were alive these islands were known as the Cheerful
+Isles. But King Wistful changed their name soon after he came to the
+throne, and insisted on their being called the Monotonous Isles. For,
+strange as it may sound, this little King of eight years old thought his
+kingdom was the dullest and the ugliest and the most wearisome place in
+the world, and nothing that his nurses or his councillors could do ever
+succeeded in making him laugh and play like other little boys.
+
+"Only look at the stupid things!" muttered his Majesty impatiently, as
+he stood and surveyed his kingdom from the top of a small, grassy
+hillock. "Five round islands in a row; always five round islands in a
+row! If only some of them were square, it would be something!"
+
+At the bottom of the hill was a wood, one of those pale-green baby
+woods, where the trees are young and slender and nothing grows very
+plentifully except the bracken and the heather. And as the King stood
+and felt sorry for himself at the top of the hill, out from the wood at
+the bottom of the hill came the sound of a little girl's voice, singing
+a quaint little song. And this was the song:--
+
+        "Sing-song! Don't be long!
+        Wistful, Wistful, come and play!
+        Sing-song! It's very wrong
+        To stay and stay and stay away!
+    The world is much too nice a place
+    To make you pull so long a face;
+    It's full of people being kind,
+    And full of flowers for you to find;
+    There's heaps of folks for you to tease
+    And all the naughtiness you please;
+    To sulk is surely waste of time
+    When all those trees are yours to climb!
+        Ting-a-ring! Make haste, King!
+    I've something really nice to say;
+    Ting-a-ring! A _proper_ King
+    Would not make me sing all day!"
+
+King Wistful thrilled all over with excitement. Was something really
+going to happen at last? He had hardly time to think, however, before
+the little singer came out of the wood into the open. She wore a clean
+white pinafore, and on her head was a large white sunbonnet, and under
+the sunbonnet were two of the brightest brown eyes the King had ever
+seen. He stepped down the hill towards her, wondering how anything so
+pretty and so merry could have come into his kingdom; and at the same
+instant the little girl saw the King and came running up the hill
+towards him, so it was not long before they stood together, hand in
+hand, half-way down the hillside.
+
+"Where did you come from and who are you and how long have you been
+here?" asked the King, breathlessly.
+
+"I am Eyebright, of course," answered the little girl, smiling; "and
+I've been here always."
+
+"Who taught you to sing that song about me?" demanded the King.
+
+"The magician," answered Eyebright; "and he told me to sing it every day
+until you came. But you _have_ been a long time coming!"
+
+"I'm very sorry," replied his Majesty, apologetically; "you see, the
+magician did not tell me to come. In fact, I don't even know who the
+magician is."
+
+"Are you not the King, then?" asked Eyebright, opening her great brown
+eyes as wide as they would go.
+
+The little King felt it was hardly necessary to answer this; but he set
+his heels together and took off his crown and made her the best bow he
+had learned at his dancing-class, just to show beyond any doubt that he
+was the King. Eyebright still looked a little doubtful.
+
+"Then how is it that you do not know the magician?" she asked him. "What
+is the use of being King, if you do not know everybody who lives in your
+kingdom?"
+
+"It isn't any use; I never said I wanted to be King, did I?" said his
+Majesty, a little crossly. It was not pleasant to find that somebody
+else, and only a little girl in a sunbonnet, knew more about his kingdom
+than he did.
+
+"What a very funny boy you are!" remarked Eyebright, without noticing
+his crossness. "I always thought it must be so splendid to be a King,
+and to have a banquet whenever you like, and never to go out without a
+procession, and to wear a crown instead of a sunbonnet, and--"
+
+"That's all you know about it," interrupted the King, somewhat
+impolitely. "There aren't any banquets; and when there are, you only
+have stupid things with long names to eat, and you never know whether to
+eat them with a fork or a spoon, and it's always wrong whichever you do.
+And if you ask for jumbles or chocolate creams or plum-cake, you're told
+you mustn't spoil your dinner. And all the procession you ever get is a
+procession of nurses, who won't even let you step in a puddle if you
+want to!"
+
+"Dear me," said Eyebright, "you're no better off than a little boy in an
+ordinary nursery!"
+
+The little King drew himself up on tiptoe with great dignity. "Some of
+your remarks are most foolish," he said. "You forget that I have a
+kingdom of my own as well as a nursery. To be sure," he added sadly, "it
+is not much to boast of, for it is a very stupid kingdom, and nothing
+nice ever happens in it."
+
+"What do you mean?" exclaimed Eyebright. "Your kingdom is the nicest
+kingdom in the whole world!"
+
+King Wistful had managed to keep his temper so far, but this was more
+than he could bear. "Rubbish!" he cried, completely forgetting his royal
+manners. "You come up the hill with me, and I'll show you what a stupid
+kingdom it is."
+
+So they raced up to the top of the hill and looked down at the five
+round islands in a row. "There!" said King Wistful. "Did you ever see
+anything so dull?"
+
+The little girl shook her head. "I think it is all as pretty as it can
+be," she said. "Look how the sun glints on the cornfields, and see the
+great red and blue patches of flowers--"
+
+"But they're always the same flowers," complained his Majesty, yawning.
+
+"They're supposed to be the same flowers, but they never are," answered
+Eyebright. "If you were to pick them--"
+
+"Kings never pick flowers," he replied haughtily.
+
+"Perhaps that is why you know so little about them," retorted Eyebright;
+and his Majesty began to feel he was not getting the best of it.
+
+"Anyhow," he continued hastily, "you must own that the sea never
+changes."
+
+"Oh!" said Eyebright; "that is because you have not learned the sea
+properly. It has ever so many different faces, and ever so many
+different voices, too."
+
+The King turned and stared at her. "Are you a witch?" he asked
+wonderingly.
+
+"No!" laughed Eyebright, merrily. "If I were, I would make you see
+things right instead of wrong." Then she suddenly scampered down the
+hill again. "Come along, _quick_!" she cried. "We'll go and ask the
+magician to disenchant you."
+
+King Wistful had to run his hardest to catch her, for the little girl in
+the sunbonnet certainly knew how to put one foot in front of the other.
+But then, a sunbonnet is not so apt to tumble off a person's head as a
+crown, and that makes all the difference in a running race.
+
+"Where does the magician live?" he panted, when he came up with her.
+
+"In the middle island," she answered. "We'll find the boat and follow
+the river down to the sea." She plunged into the wood as she spoke, and
+threaded her way through the slender young trees, with his Majesty
+close at her heels. Sometimes the bracken was as tall as she was, but
+the boy behind could always see the sunbonnet bobbing up and down just
+ahead of him, and he followed it until they came out at the other side
+of the wood and found themselves on the banks of a charming little
+river. A small round boat like a tub, lined with pink rose-leaves, was
+waiting for them; and into this they both jumped.
+
+"Oh, oh!" cried Eyebright, jumping up and down with delight. "The
+fairies are out to-day! Look at them--the purple ones in the
+loosestrife, and the pink and white ones in the comfrey, and--"
+
+"You'll upset the boat if you don't sit still," interrupted the King,
+who felt cross because he could not see the fairies. "Let me have the
+oars and I'll take you down the stream."
+
+"You need not do anything of the sort," said Eyebright; "for this is the
+boat the magician gave me, and it always takes you wherever you want to
+go."
+
+So they just sat in the sunshine and floated lazily along, and they
+dabbled their hands in the water and made their sleeves as wet as they
+pleased, and they caught at the branches above as they passed under
+them, and they leaned over the side and stretched after everything that
+grew out of reach; and, in short, if they had not been in a fairy boat,
+it is very certain that they would have tumbled into the water several
+times before they reached their journey's end. Presently, the river
+widened out into the big calm sea; and after that, the boat quickened
+its speed and took them across to the middle island in no time at all,
+for the fairies know well enough that nobody wants to dawdle about in an
+open sea, where there are no tadpoles to catch and no trees that sweep
+their branches down to meet the water.
+
+When the boat stopped, they found themselves on the edge of a shore
+covered with sea-lilac and yellow poppies, and wonderful shells that
+sang without being put to any one's ear; and just a little way along the
+beach was the magician's cave. There was no doubt about its being the
+right cave, for over the door of it was written in square acid tablets:
+"This is the magician's cave." Besides, the whole cave was dug out of a
+solid almond rock; and of course, any other person's cave would have
+been made of plain rock without any almonds in it.
+
+"Come along," said Eyebright; and the two children walked up the beach
+and knocked at the magician's door and went in.
+
+Some people might think that a cave on the sea-shore would be full of
+draughts and jellyfish and wet shrimps; but this particular cave was
+just like the nicest room that ever belonged to a castle-in-the-air. The
+wonder of it was, that whoever went into it found the very things he had
+never had and always wanted, and none of the things that he had always
+had and never wanted. So Eyebright immediately found a beautiful
+story-book, with a coloured picture on every page, and all the sad
+stories squeezed between the happy stories, so that no one who read it
+could ever cry for long at a time; while the King found the inside of a
+clock waiting to be picked to pieces, and an open pocket-knife with a
+bit of firewood lying handy, and a full-rigged schooner ready to be
+sailed. And they both saw the dear old magician, sitting in his
+arm-chair and smiling at them.
+
+He was dressed in a long cloak, that always began by being a green cloak
+but changed every other minute to a different colour, according to the
+mood the magician was in; and as he was always in a nice mood, whether
+it was a sad or a merry one, his cloak always managed to be a nice
+colour. On his head was a high pointed hat, with crackers sticking out
+of it and a pattern worked all over it in caramels and preserved
+cherries; and he wore furry foxgloves on his hands to keep them warm,
+because he was not so young as he used to be. He had been practising as
+a magician for over a thousand years, but he did not look very old, for
+all that; he was what might be called pleasantly old, for he had soft
+white hair and a curly white beard and a pink complexion like a
+school-boy's. That is how a magician grows old when he has always been a
+jolly magician.
+
+Eyebright ran straight up to him and climbed on his knee and hugged him.
+"I've brought the King to see you," she announced; "and we want you to
+be a nice, kind, _lovely_ magician and help him to be disenchanted."
+
+The magician stood up and shook hands with the King, just to make him
+feel at home; and the boy did not feel shy another minute, and quite
+forgot that he had never paid a visit before without a procession of
+nurses to look after him.
+
+"You are very good children to call on me at tea-time," said the
+magician. "If there is one thing more than another that makes me feel
+the ache in my bones, it is having tea by myself. Now, would you like to
+have it on the floor, or shall I call up a table?"
+
+The King, who had had his meals on a table all his life, voted for the
+floor; but when Eyebright said it would be more fun to see what would
+happen if they chose the table, he had to own that perhaps she was
+right. What happened was very simple: the magician just stamped on the
+floor, and a neat little table, covered with a nice white cloth, walked
+in at the door like any person and took up its position in the middle of
+the floor.
+
+"Well!" exclaimed Eyebright; "I never knew tables could walk, before!"
+
+"What do you suppose they have four legs for?" asked the magician,
+smiling.
+
+"My nursery table does not walk," observed the little King.
+
+"Ah," said the magician, wisely, "some tables do not know how to put two
+and two together. Now for some chairs!"
+
+He stamped on the floor again, and two little arm-chairs bustled into
+the room as fast as their fat little legs would carry them. "You must
+excuse their being in such a hurry," said the magician; "they have been
+playing at musical chairs all their lives, you see. Now, while you are
+laying the table, I will boil the kettle. Crockery in the left-hand
+cupboard, and eatables in the right-hand cupboard!"
+
+So the magician set to work and lighted the fire with peppermint-sticks,
+and the two children opened the doors of his wonderful cupboards. The
+crockery in the left-hand cupboard was the right sort of crockery, for
+none of it matched; so it did not take a minute to find a small pink cup
+and a green saucer for Eyebright, and a big blue cup and a red saucer
+for the magician, and a nice purple mug without any saucer at all for
+King Wistful. As for the right-hand cupboard, the little King was
+overjoyed when he found it stocked with jumbles and chocolate creams and
+plum-cake. "I _am_ glad," he said with a sigh of relief, "that you don't
+keep seed-cake in your cupboard. Seed-cake always reminds me of eleven
+o'clock in the morning."
+
+"Ah," said the magician, "the wymps saw to that, when they filled my
+cupboard for me, centuries ago. There's never any bread-and-butter in
+it, either--until you've had as much plum-cake as you can eat."
+
+That was a delightful tea-party. The magician did not mind in the least
+when they made polite remarks about the food and told him his jumbles
+might have been kept a little longer with advantage, or that his
+chocolate creams were not quite so soft as some they had known. But
+they hastened to add that his tea was the nicest tea they had ever
+tasted because it had only a grown-up amount of milk in it, so he would
+have been rather a cross magician if he had minded. Nor did he raise any
+objection when they walked about in the middle of tea and took a look at
+the picture-book, or whittled away the piece of firewood, or danced
+round the cave and shouted because everything was so nice. And after tea
+there were all the magician's treasures to be turned out of odd nooks
+and corners and left about on the floor, and all his new quill pens to
+be tried, and his clean sheets of note-paper to be scribbled over. And
+when they were tired of exploring the cave and had eaten as much
+plum-cake as they wanted, the magician saw it was the right moment to
+begin telling them really true stories; and as he was a magician, of
+course his true stories were all fairy stories, which, as every one
+knows, are the only true stories in the world worth believing. But even
+the stories came to an end at last, and then both the children
+remembered at once why they had come to see the magician.
+
+"Well, what can I do for you?" he asked, before they had time to say
+anything; for, truly, he would not have been a magician at all if he
+had not known what they were thinking about. He smiled so encouragingly
+that the little King answered him at once.
+
+"It's like this," he began, "there's something wrong with the way I see
+things."
+
+"Of course there is," said the magician: "the wymps threw dust in your
+eyes when you were a baby; and you cannot expect to see things in the
+same light as other people when the wymps have once thrown dust in your
+eyes."
+
+"Why did they throw dust in my eyes?" asked little King Wistful.
+
+"Usual reason," answered the magician, briefly. "They were not asked to
+your christening, that's all. If people will persist in leaving the
+wymps out when they give a party, they must take the consequences.
+However, as you were not to blame in the matter, the wymps would be the
+first to own that you ought not to be bewymped any longer. The best
+thing you can do is to go up to Wympland yourself and ask them to take
+away the spell."
+
+The little King looked at Eyebright and hesitated. "It is a long way to
+go all alone," he remarked; and Eyebright immediately stepped up to him
+and took his hand.
+
+"I'll come with you," she said; "I've always longed to go to the other
+side of the sun. How are we to get there, magician?"
+
+"Well," answered the magician, "the usual way is to climb up a sunbeam,
+but that's not very quick and sunbeams are apt to be slippery in the dry
+weather. Shall I send you up in a flash of lightning or on the spur of a
+lark?"
+
+"Spur of a lark!" echoed the King. "You mean on the spur of a moment,
+don't you?"
+
+"Not a bit of it," answered the magician; "you'd never get up to
+Wympland on the spur of anything but a lark, I can tell you! You have to
+get up there very early in any case, if you want to be even with the
+wymps; so the best way is to rise with the lark. However, as it is
+getting rather late in the day for larks, I had better send you up in a
+lightning flash. Will you manage it alone, or shall I send a conductor
+with it?"
+
+"Would the conductor show us the way?" asked Eyebright.
+
+"Dear me, no," said the magician. "Lightning conductors never show
+anything but the stupidity of some people. Perhaps you'd better have the
+lightning without a conductor; so stand on one side, while I pick you
+out a nice quiet flash without any thunder hanging to it."
+
+He took down a large sack, labelled _Storms_, from the shelf, untied the
+top and plunged his head into it. Eyebright stole a little closer to the
+King than before and hoped that nothing would go off with a bang.
+
+"I say," said his Majesty, putting his arm round her, "it strikes me--"
+
+"That is impossible," interrupted the magician in a stuffy voice from
+the middle of the sack, "for I've got it in both hands, and it isn't
+going to strike anybody so long as you treat it kindly. Now, off you go
+in a flash!"
+
+And off they did go in something, though they never knew what it was,
+for they had no time to see anything before they found themselves
+dropped with a thud on the other side of the sun. For a moment or two
+they just lay where they had fallen without moving; then they sat up and
+rubbed their eyes and looked round.
+
+"Oh!" exclaimed Eyebright, clasping her hands tight; "I had no idea it
+was like this."
+
+Of course Eyebright knew no more about Wympland than she had learned in
+her geography lessons, and we all know how little geography books ever
+tell us about the really nice places in the world. So, although she
+knew as well as any other little girl that Wympland has no physical
+features and its inhabitants have no occupation, that its climate is
+dull and foggy and its government is a sleeping monarchy, she was not in
+the least prepared for what she did see.
+
+"Well," said a voice somewhere near, "what do you think of it?"
+
+Just in front of them a wymp was standing on his head, which is a wymp's
+favourite way of resting his legs. He seemed to expect an answer, so the
+King did his best to think of one that should be both polite and
+truthful. As a matter of fact, he did not think much of Wympland at all.
+
+"It--it is rather full of fog, isn't it?" he began, a little nervously.
+
+The wymp looked distinctly hurt; but before he had time to get angry
+Eyebright put things right in her quiet little way.
+
+"I don't think it is yellow fog," she said; "it is more like dull
+sunshine."
+
+The wymp fairly wympled when he heard this.
+
+"You've hit it!" he cried in a delighted tone; "that's what it is
+really. It's the folks from the front of the sun who call it yellow fog;
+they're blinded by their own sunshine, they are. This is the back of
+the sun, you see, and the sunshine naturally loses a bit of its polish
+by the time it has worked through."
+
+"I think I like bright sunshine best," observed the King.
+
+"That is absurd!" said the wymp. "Why, you can't look at it without
+blinking, to begin with. In Wympland you get all the advantages of the
+sun and none of the drawbacks,--no sunblinds or sunstrokes or sunspots!
+You must be a stupid boy if you can't see that!"
+
+"It is your fault, not mine," answered the King boldly; "you shouldn't
+have thrown dust in my eyes if you wanted me to see Wympland in the
+right light!"
+
+The wymp turned several somersaults to show his amazement at the King's
+words, and finally stood thoughtfully on one leg.
+
+"That's serious," he said. "We didn't know you'd ever come up here, or
+we shouldn't have done it. However, it can't be helped now, so you'd
+better go back again. It doesn't matter if you _do_ see things wrong--at
+the front of the sun."
+
+"But it does matter!" they both exclaimed; "and that's why we want you
+to take away the spell, please."
+
+The wymp stood on his head again and shook it from side to side, which
+no one but a wymp could have done, considering the awkwardness of the
+position. "There's only one thing to be done," he said at last. "You
+must exchange eyes."
+
+They stared at the wymp and then at each other. The little King began to
+think busily, but Eyebright spoke without thinking at all.
+
+"Very well," she said. "How is it to be done?"
+
+"Quite easy," answered the wymp, cheerfully. "All you've got to do is to
+wish with all your might to have the King's eyes instead of your own,
+and there you are!"
+
+At that moment the King finished his thinking. "Stop!" he shouted. "If I
+take her eyes away, _she_ will always see things wrong!"
+
+But the King had spoken too late. Eyebright had already wished with all
+her might, and her eyes had turned as blue as deep water while his
+Majesty's were round and large and brown.
+
+"What fun!" she cried, laughing happily. "Isn't it a nice change to have
+somebody else's eyes?"
+
+The little King, however, was far too furious to listen to her.
+
+"Stand up and let me knock you down!" he cried, shaking his fist at the
+wymp. "Look what you have done. She will see things wrong to the end of
+her days!"
+
+"Don't be a foolish little boy," said the wymp, calmly. "Take her home
+and try to see things right yourself."
+
+The King certainly did not take her home, nor himself either; but it is
+the truth that they both found themselves, the very next minute,
+standing on the top of the small green hillock and looking down at the
+kingdom of the Monotonous Isles.
+
+"Hurrah!" shouted King Wistful, waving his crown joyfully. "What a
+beautiful kingdom I've got! Look how the sun glints on the cornfields,
+and see the great red and blue patches of flowers! Don't you think it
+_is_ a beautiful kingdom?" he added, turning to the little girl in the
+sunbonnet.
+
+Eyebright was distinctly puzzled. She _thought_ she only saw five round
+islands in a row. But, of course, it was impossible that the King should
+be mistaken. So she looked once more over the kingdom of the Monotonous
+Isles and then back at the anxious face of the little King.
+
+"Yes," she said softly, "it is, as you say, a beautiful kingdom." Then
+she ran down the hill and disappeared among the slender trees of the
+baby wood, and little King Wistful went home to bed.
+
+There is a Queen now as well as a King of the Monotonous Isles. She has
+black hair and blue eyes, and she wears a crown instead of a sunbonnet,
+and she quite agrees with the King whenever he tells her how beautiful
+their kingdom is. And if this should seem remarkable to some people, it
+need only be remembered that the Queen sees everything with the King's
+eyes.
+
+
+
+
+The Hundredth Princess
+
+
+There was once a King who was so fond of hunting that all the rabbits in
+his kingdom were born with their hearts in their mouths. The King would
+have been extremely surprised to hear this, for, of course, he never
+hunted anything so small as a rabbit; but rabbits are foolish enough for
+anything, as all the world knows, and it is certain that the rabbits of
+the King's forest would never have had a happy moment to this day, if
+the Green Enchantress had not suddenly taken it into her head to try and
+bewitch the King.
+
+Now, the Green Enchantress was very beautiful indeed. She sat all day
+long at the foot of an old lime-tree in the royal forest, and she was
+dressed all in green, and she had small white hands and great black eyes
+and quantities and quantities of dark red hair. Every animal in the
+forest, from the largest wild boar down to the smallest baby-rabbit, was
+a friend of hers; and it made her dreadfully unhappy when she saw them
+being killed just to amuse the King. So it was no wonder that she made
+up her mind, at last, to try and bewitch him; and the first time she
+tried was on a fine summer evening, when the royal party was riding home
+from the hunt.
+
+It had been an exceedingly dull hunt that day, for the King had found
+nothing whatever to kill, and this made him so exceedingly irritable
+that his followers took care to keep a good way behind him as they rode
+along. That was how it happened that the King was riding quite alone,
+when a voice suddenly called out to him from the side of the road.
+
+"Good-evening, King!" said the voice. "Have you had good sport to-day?"
+
+The King pulled up his horse and looked round; and when he saw a
+wonderful-looking girl all dressed in green, sitting at the foot of an
+old lime-tree, he did not know quite what to say. He knew very little
+about girls, for he had spent all his life in killing things, but he had
+a sort of idea that the girl in green was not much like the princesses
+who came to court.
+
+"I have had no sport at all," he said at last. "All the animals were
+hiding to-day."
+
+"No doubt they were," said the Green Enchantress. "So would you be, if
+people came hunting you with great horrid spears and things!"
+
+She was really laughing at him, but the King had no idea of it. He only
+looked at her more solemnly than before.
+
+"What do you know about it?" he asked her.
+
+"Perhaps I know more about this forest than you know about the whole of
+your kingdom," answered the Green Enchantress; and this time she laughed
+outright. But the King did not mind in the least.
+
+"Perhaps you do," he said simply. "I never pretended to know much. I do
+not even know why you are laughing. Will you tell me?"
+
+"I am laughing because you know so little," she answered mysteriously,
+"and because there is so much I could tell you if it pleased me."
+
+"I have no doubt you could," replied the King. "Will it please you to
+tell me now?"
+
+"I don't feel inclined to tell you now," said the Green Enchantress.
+
+"How strange!" exclaimed the King. "If I had anything to tell, I should
+tell it at once; but then, I am not a girl. When will you tell me?"
+
+"Next time you come," laughed the girl in green.
+
+"Next time?" said the King. "Why should I come twice when once would
+do?"
+
+She did not trouble to answer that at all; and when the King looked
+again at the old lime-tree, the girl in green had completely
+disappeared.
+
+"Is there a witch in the forest?" he asked, when his followers came
+riding up to him.
+
+"There is the Green Enchantress, your Majesty," answered the chief
+huntsman. "I have never seen her, but they say she is the most beautiful
+woman in the whole world."
+
+"Indeed!" said the King, in surprise; and he went home and spent the
+whole of the evening in trying to remember what the girl in green had
+looked like. He had quite forgotten, however; so the very next morning
+he stole out of the palace long before any one was awake, and walked as
+fast as he could in the direction of the old lime-tree. The wild boars
+and the other animals were most surprised to see him there so early in
+the day, and they followed him in twos and threes to see what he was
+going to do. As for the King, he strode on over the dewy grass and never
+noticed them at all. And all the while the bracken on either side of
+him was alive with trembling little rabbits, all squeaking to one
+another, with their hearts in their mouths,--
+
+"We shall certainly be killed if the King sees us!"
+
+At last he came to the old lime-tree at the side of the road; and there
+sat the wonderful girl all dressed in green, with her dark red hair
+falling round her down to the ground. The King would have taken off his
+crown to her, if he had not come out without it; but he made her a low
+bow instead, and the Green Enchantress began to laugh.
+
+"Dear me!" she said, "why have you come back again?"
+
+"They told me you were the most beautiful woman in the world, so I came
+to see if it was true," said the King.
+
+"And now you are here, do you think it is true?" asked the girl in
+green.
+
+"I suppose so," said the King, doubtfully; "but I don't know much about
+girls. If you were a wild boar, now, or----"
+
+"But I'm not a wild boar!" cried the Green Enchantress; and she was so
+angry at being compared to a wild boar that she promptly threw a spell
+over the King and tried to turn _him_ into a wild boar. But the King
+went on being a king, just the same as before, and he had no idea that
+he was expected to be a wild boar at that very moment.
+
+"When are you going to tell me all the things you know?" he asked her,
+smiling.
+
+"I have forgotten what there was to tell," said the Green Enchantress,
+sulkily; and she got up and walked away among the trees. The King
+wondered what he had done to offend her, and he tried hard to remember
+whether he had ever offended any of the princesses who came to court;
+but as none of the princesses who came to court ever thought of showing
+their feelings, he would not have known if he had.
+
+Meanwhile the Green Enchantress was feeling very cross indeed. "What is
+the use of being an enchantress if people refuse to be enchanted?" she
+grumbled; and she ran off as fast as she could to find her godfather,
+the magician Smilax, for nothing ever put her into such a good temper as
+a visit to her godfather. Now, Smilax was the most amiable magician the
+world has ever contained, and he lived in an ordinary little cottage
+with a green door and a white doorstep and a red chimney-pot, and he did
+not look like a magician at all. All the same, Smilax was by no means a
+stupid magician, as the rest of the story will show.
+
+"What is the matter?" he asked, when his godchild ran in at the door.
+"Do you want me to teach you a new spell?"
+
+"No, indeed!" cried the Green Enchantress. "I am tired of spells; I want
+something much better."
+
+"Well, well," said the kind old magician, "let us hear what it is all
+about, and then we'll see what we can do."
+
+It was impossible to go on being cross when any one was as good-tempered
+as Smilax; so his godchild climbed at once on to the arm of his chair,
+and sat there with her little white feet dangling, while she told him
+all about the King who would not turn into a wild boar. "Is it not
+hard," pouted the Green Enchantress, "that I cannot bewitch the King?"
+
+"Some kings are easier to bewitch than others," remarked the magician,
+wisely. "Now, what is it you want me to do for you?"
+
+"I want you to make me into a princess," said his godchild, promptly.
+"Then I can go to court and dance with the King! Only think of it!" And
+she pretended that the poker was the King and danced round the room with
+it, to show how she should behave when she got to court.
+
+"That's easily done," said Smilax. "You shall go to court and dance with
+the King, if you like; and I will make you so fine a princess that the
+King will not be able to distinguish you from all the other princesses
+in the palace!"
+
+"But I don't want to be like all the other princesses, godfather; I want
+to be a _real_ princess," objected the Green Enchantress.
+
+Smilax shook his head. "Then I cannot help you," he said. "Nobody can
+make a real princess,--not even the Fairy Queen herself. Real princesses
+make themselves, and that is a very different matter."
+
+"Shall I never go to court, then?" asked his godchild, with tears in her
+eyes.
+
+"Of course you shall!" said Smilax. "Can you not go to court without
+being a princess? There is a back door to the palace as well as a front
+one, and any ordinary person can get in at the back door. But you must
+give up all your witchcraft the moment you set foot in the palace, for
+it is impossible to be an ordinary person and a bewitching one at the
+same moment."
+
+"I don't mind that," said his godchild. "If I cannot bewitch the King I
+do not want to be an enchantress any more. I will go to the palace this
+very minute!"
+
+And so she did, and that was how it came about that there was a new
+scullery-maid at the palace; and, one fine morning, the King met her all
+among the vegetables, as he took his stroll in the garden after
+breakfast. It is extremely probable that the King would not have noticed
+her at all if she had not happened to be wearing a bright green
+handkerchief tied over her dark red hair. He felt sure that he had seen
+that bright green and that dark red somewhere before, so he stopped and
+looked at her.
+
+"What are you doing?" he asked her, with a smile.
+
+"I am picking beans for the King's dinner," answered the little
+scullery-maid.
+
+"How extremely kind of you!" exclaimed the King, who had always supposed
+that the beans for his dinner picked themselves. "Will you let me look
+at them?"
+
+She held out her basket, and the King peeped inside and found it full of
+bright scarlet flowers.
+
+"Are those beans?" asked the King in wonderment, and he thought he had
+never seen anything so charming before.
+
+"I _hope_ so," said the little scullery-maid with an anxious sigh, for
+she knew no more about it than the King and was dreadfully afraid of
+being scolded for picking the wrong thing. Indeed, she had hardly
+finished speaking when the angry voice of the chief cook called her from
+the back door; and away she scampered down the garden path.
+
+Every one noticed how absent-minded the King was at dinner, that day. He
+talked even less than usual, and when the fifteenth course came round he
+turned reproachfully to the Prime Minister.
+
+"I thought I was going to have beans for dinner," observed the King, in
+a disappointed tone.
+
+"Your Majesty has just helped himself to beans," said the Prime
+Minister, when he had recovered from his surprise at the King's remark.
+
+"What?" exclaimed the King, looking at his plate. "Are these the
+beautiful scarlet beans that grow in my kitchen-garden? Impossible!"
+
+"They turn green when they are cooked, your Majesty," said the Prime
+Minister, who had never seen a bean growing in his life but could not
+possibly have owned such a thing before the court.
+
+"Then let me have my beans before they are cooked, in future," said the
+King; and the Prime Minister hastily made a note of it on his clean
+cuff.
+
+There was a magnificent ball at the palace that evening, and the King
+had ninety-nine delightful princesses to dance with, but none of them
+had dark red hair, and when he had finished dancing with the
+ninety-ninth he once more turned reproachfully to the Prime Minister.
+
+"Where is the hundredth Princess?" he demanded impatiently.
+
+The Prime Minister knew no more about the hundredth Princess than he had
+known about beans, and he wished he had gone to bed instead of coming to
+the court ball to be worried by the King's questions. He was too sleepy,
+however, to invent any more answers, so he had to tell the truth; and no
+doubt he would have made a much better Prime Minister if he had always
+been too sleepy to invent things that were not true, but that, of
+course, has nothing to do with the story.
+
+"I have never heard of the hundredth Princess, your Majesty," he said
+wearily. "Would it please your Majesty to tell me what she is like?"
+
+He fully expected the King to be exceedingly angry, and he wondered
+whether he should be beheaded at once or only imprisoned in one of the
+King's dungeons. It was therefore a great surprise to him when the King
+burst out laughing and was not in the least offended.
+
+"I never heard of her myself until this morning," said the King. "She
+has wonderful dark red hair, and she is so sweet and so kind that she
+actually picks the vegetables for my dinner!"
+
+The Prime Minister was so relieved at not being put into a dungeon that
+he positively yawned in the King's presence; and the King, for the first
+time in his life, noticed that he looked tired and sent him home to bed,
+which was certainly a much nicer place to send him to than a dungeon.
+And as for the Prime Minister, he went on speaking the truth to the end
+of his days.
+
+The next morning, the King hastened into his garden the moment he had
+swallowed his breakfast. The chief huntsman met him just as he was
+leaving the palace, and asked him what time it would please him to start
+for the hunt.
+
+"Hunt?" cried the King, impatiently. "What hunt? I am going to pick the
+vegetables for my dinner, and that is ever so much more important!" And
+he ran down the steps and across the lawn, as never a King ran before.
+
+The little scullery-maid was wandering among the gooseberry bushes with
+a very disconsolate look on her face. "I am looking for sage to stuff
+the King's ducks with," she said, when the King came hurrying towards
+her; "but I don't know a bit what it is like, and how can I be expected
+to pick things when I don't know what to pick?"
+
+"Do not look so distressed," said the King, for her eyes were full of
+tears. "I am the King, and I do not mind whether my ducks are stuffed or
+not."
+
+"Ah, but the chief cook does," said the little scullery-maid, who, of
+course, had known all the while that he was the King. "The chief cook
+will beat me if I do not fill my basket with sage. Look! this is where
+he beat me yesterday for bringing the wrong beans."
+
+She rolled up her sleeve and showed him a tiny black speck on her dainty
+white arm. To be sure, it was not much of a bruise, but when one has
+been an enchantress all one's life it is a little hard to be beaten for
+not knowing enough. The King was quite overcome with distress, and he
+stooped and kissed the little black mark tenderly; and that, as every
+one knows, is the only way to cure a bruise.
+
+"Come with me," he said, "and I will help you to find some sage. Then
+the King's ducks will be stuffed, and the chief cook will not be able to
+beat you."
+
+So the King and the scullery-maid wandered all over the kitchen-garden
+and hunted for sage. And the King knew just as much about it as the
+scullery-maid, and the scullery-maid knew as much as the King, and that
+was just exactly nothing at all; so there is no doubt that the King's
+ducks would never have got stuffed that day, if the pair of them had not
+suddenly stumbled upon a bush of rosemary.
+
+"Does it not smell sweet?" exclaimed the little scullery-maid, and she
+picked a whole handful of it and gave it to the King.
+
+"Surely," cried the King, "anything so charming as this must be the very
+thing we are looking for!"
+
+The angry voice of the chief cook sounded once more from the back door,
+so they did not stop to think any more about it but filled the basket
+with rosemary as fast as they could; and then away scampered the little
+scullery-maid down the path, while the King stood and watched the little
+curls of dark red hair that fluttered in the breeze.
+
+The chief cook was far too grand a person to stuff the King's ducks, so
+he left it to the little scullery-maid; and the result was that the
+King's ducks were stuffed with rosemary. There were only two people in
+the palace who enjoyed their dinner that day: one was the King, who sat
+at the head of the royal table and had three helpings of roast duck; and
+the other was the little scullery-maid, who sat on the back doorstep and
+ate the scrapings of all the plates out of a big brown bowl. As for the
+courtiers, they never forgot that dinner as long as they lived; but this
+was not surprising, for ducks that are stuffed with rosemary are surely
+ducks to be remembered.
+
+After that, the courtiers had to eat a good many nasty things for
+dinner. Every day the chief cook sent the little scullery-maid into the
+garden to pick something for the King's dinner, and every day the King
+came and helped her to find it; and although they never found the right
+thing and although it was generally very nasty, the King always ate
+three helpings of it, and that was all that mattered to the chief cook.
+To be sure, it was a lot of trouble to take, just to please the chief
+cook, and it would have been far simpler to have cut off his head then
+and there; but neither the King nor the scullery-maid thought of that.
+After all, it was much nicer to go on meeting each other among the
+gooseberry bushes, and it certainly saved the expense of an execution.
+
+Before long people began to wonder what had come over the King. He never
+went near the royal forest, and when he was not in the kitchen-garden he
+was in the library, looking for books that would tell him the difference
+between a banana and a turnip and the best place to find a cauliflower.
+The chief huntsman and all the other huntsmen had never been so dull in
+their lives; but the wild boars and all the other animals were as happy
+as the day was long. Even the rabbits began to pop up their heads above
+the bracken, and were quite amazed when they found that no one was
+waiting to kill them. "Truly," they squeaked to one another, "the Green
+Enchantress must have bewitched the King after all!" And perhaps they
+were not far wrong.
+
+Now, the same thing cannot go on for ever; and one morning, when the
+King hastened out into the garden as usual, the scullery-maid saw at
+once that he had something important to say.
+
+"There is to be a ball to-morrow," he told her. "The Prime Minister says
+so! And there will be ninety-nine princesses there besides yourself."
+
+The little scullery-maid shook her head. "I shall not be there," she
+said. "I am only a scullery-maid; and no one, not even the Fairy Queen,
+can make me into a real princess."
+
+"You are the hundredth Princess," declared the King; "and no one, not
+even the Fairy Queen, can make you into a scullery-maid."
+
+"The ninety-nine other princesses have never picked the vegetables for
+the King's dinner," sighed the little scullery-maid.
+
+"They would never do anything half so sweet nor so kind," said the King.
+
+"The ninety-nine other princesses," continued the little scullery-maid,
+looking down at her crumpled print gown, "have never worn such an old
+frock as mine!"
+
+"Nor have they ever looked half so beautiful or so charming," said the
+King.
+
+The angry voice of the chief cook sounded loudly from the back door, and
+the little scullery-maid turned to run down the path as usual. But,
+this time, the King caught her by the hand and held her back.
+
+"Will you come to the ball and dance with me?" he asked coaxingly.
+
+She looked very sad. "I am not a real princess, you see," she sighed.
+
+The angry voice of the chief cook sounded louder than before, and she
+pulled away her hand and escaped down the path.
+
+"Will you come to the ball?" the King shouted after her.
+
+"Perhaps!" laughed the little scullery-maid over her shoulder, and the
+next moment she was out of sight. It was truly a strange way of
+accepting an invitation to the King's ball; but then, she was the
+hundredth Princess, and perhaps that made all the difference.
+
+It was a most magnificent ball; and the hundredth Princess _did_ come to
+it. For, just as the King finished dancing with the last of the
+ninety-nine princesses, a great hubbub was heard in the hall outside;
+and into the room ran the little scullery-maid, and after her ran the
+chief cook with the soup-ladle in his hand, and after them both came the
+Prime Minister, and the chief huntsman, and the Lord High Executioner,
+and all the other people who were in the hall because they did not know
+how to dance.
+
+"Who are you?" cried the ninety-nine princesses, as the little
+scullery-maid stood in front of them all, in her crumpled print gown,
+with her green handkerchief tied over her head.
+
+"Who are you?" echoed all the courtiers and all the pages who happened
+to be there.
+
+"She is nothing but a scullery-maid," cried the chief cook, brandishing
+his soup-ladle.
+
+"She is the Green Enchantress," gasped the chief huntsman.
+
+"You are all talking rubbish," said the Prime Minister, who had
+certainly lost some of his manners since he took to speaking the truth.
+"Any one can see she is the hundredth Princess!"
+
+But it was the King who really settled the matter.
+
+"She is the Queen, of course," he said gently, and came and took her by
+the hand. And no one thought of contradicting him, for, although real
+princesses have to make themselves, it is quite certain that any king
+can make a queen.
+
+When the ninety-nine princesses saw how charming the little Queen was,
+they crowded round her with one accord and gave her ninety-nine kisses.
+So they were real princesses, after all! "Tell us," they begged her
+afterwards, "are you really the Green Enchantress?"
+
+"Oh no," she said; "I gave up being an enchantress when I found I could
+not bewitch the King."
+
+"Why did you want to bewitch me, dearest?" asked the King, in amazement.
+
+"Because you were so fond of killing things," she said.
+
+"Then I will never kill anything again as long as I live!" vowed the
+King.
+
+And that is the end of the story, for when the little rabbits heard that
+the King had given up hunting, they all gave a great gulp and swallowed
+their hearts. And after that, there was no one in the kingdom who was
+not happy, for everybody's heart was in the right place.
+
+
+
+
+Somebody Else's Prince
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+In a country that is so far away that only wymps and fairies ever live
+long enough to get there, an exceptional King and Queen once ruled over
+their five children, a devoted nation, and each other. Now, the five
+children had five gardens all in a row; and four of these belonged to
+the King's four sons, and were just as beautiful as gardens cannot help
+being, which is surely beautiful enough for ordinary folk. The Princess
+Gentianella, however, was anything but an ordinary princess; and her
+garden, the one that came at the end of the row, was far more beautiful
+than any one could possibly describe. This was hardly to be wondered at,
+for, while the four Princes had to work very hard in their gardens
+before anything would grow in them, the fairies just came and breathed
+on the Princess's garden, and everything that was bright to see and
+sweet to smell grew up in it. Even the wymps did not play any tricks
+with the Princess's garden; for they had given her their warm little
+wympish hearts the moment she was born; so they allowed the sun to shine
+on her charming flower-beds as much as it pleased--and, of course, it
+pleased the sun to shine there very often indeed.
+
+Now, the Princess's garden was surrounded by a wall. When she was quite
+a little girl, the King and Queen had ordered the wall to be built, just
+high enough to keep her from looking over it; and every time that the
+Princess grew a little more, another row of bricks was added to the
+wall, so that, by the time she had stopped growing altogether, the wall
+was ever so much higher than she was. She was such a dainty little
+Princess, though, that even then it was not a very high wall. Still, it
+was high enough to prevent her from seeing what was on the other side;
+and this annoyed her so much that all the pretty flowers the fairies
+could give her did not make up for the things she was not tall enough to
+see. The King and Queen had no idea of this; they loved their little
+daughter extremely, and they only thought how clever and how wise they
+were to keep her from looking into the world that lay outside her
+garden. "She might see something to frighten her, if she could see over
+the wall," they said.
+
+The four Princes had no walls round their gardens, and what was more,
+they could see over the wall of their sister's garden, too; but they
+never thought of telling her what they saw.
+
+"Boys always have all the fun," sighed the little Princess. "I wish I
+were a boy!"
+
+Then, one by one, the three elder Princes rode away into the world and
+left their gardens to run to seed; and at last the time came for the
+King's youngest son to go too.
+
+"It will be dreadfully dull when you have gone away," said the Princess,
+who was sitting on the grass-plot in her garden when Prince Hyacinth
+came to say good-bye to her.
+
+"Oh no," answered her brother, with a smile; "you can still play in your
+pretty garden."
+
+The Princess pouted. "_You_ would not like to play by yourself for ever
+and ever and ever," she remarked.
+
+The Prince was sure he would not have liked it at all, but then, he was
+not a little girl. "It must be rather dull," he confessed; "but perhaps,
+if you wait long enough, some other prince will come into your garden,
+and then you can ask him to play with you."
+
+The Princess shook her head. "He will never be able to get in," she
+sighed. "Only look at that stupid high wall!"
+
+Prince Hyacinth laughed outright, as princes sometimes do when their
+sisters are only little girls. "I expect he'll be able to get in, if he
+is anything of a prince," he observed. Then he kissed her on both
+cheeks, and rode away like the others.
+
+That was how the Princess Gentianella was left alone in the most
+beautiful garden on this side of the sun. And if it had not been for the
+wymps, she might never have known to the end of her days what the world
+was like on the other side of her wall. Fortunately for every one,
+however, the wymps are never far off when a charming little princess is
+in trouble; and on the very day that the King's youngest son rode away
+into the world, one of the nicest and the naughtiest and the wympiest
+wymps of all came head first through the sun, and was sitting on the top
+of the Princess's wall with his legs dangling, before she had time to
+say "Oh!"
+
+"Come now," said the wymp, "let's hear all about it." His tone was so
+exceedingly friendly, and he seemed so unlikely to give her good advice,
+which was all that a fairy would have done, that the Princess
+Gentianella dried her eyes and told him everything. When she had
+finished, the wymp stood on his head to concentrate his thoughts, and
+reflected deeply.
+
+"Will _you_ tell me what is on the other side of my wall?" asked the
+Princess Gentianella, as the wymp remained in this remarkable position
+without speaking. She did not know that it never makes much difference
+to a wymp whether he is on his head or his heels, so she was naturally
+afraid that he would make his head ache if he stood on it any longer.
+However, the wymp came through the air in somersaults, when he heard the
+Princess's question, and he landed in the middle of a bed of scarlet
+poppies and twinkled at her.
+
+"You won't like it, if I do," he remarked.
+
+"I am quite positive I shall," declared the Princess; "and you are such
+a particularly nice kind of wymp that you surely cannot refuse to tell
+me!"
+
+No wymp of the right sort could have resisted an appeal like that; and
+as every wymp is the right sort of wymp, this particular wymp at once
+did as the Princess asked him.
+
+"All right," he said. "There isn't much to tell, though. There are the
+usual rows of mountains, and the usual rivers and lakes and islands and
+peninsulas and--"
+
+"Don't!" cried the Princess, stopping up her ears with her little pink
+finger-tips.
+
+"--and isthmuses," continued the wymp, cheerfully; "and volcanoes, and
+hot springs and cold springs, and palm-trees and apple-trees and
+boot-trees--"
+
+"I don't believe," interrupted the Princess, indignantly, "that there is
+nothing but a stupid geography book on the other side of my wall!"
+
+The wymp looked at her and twinkled more than ever; but when he saw that
+her eyes were shining, just as her own flowers might have done at the
+time of the dew-fall, he stopped teasing her at once. No one knows
+better than a wymp when it is time to stop teasing.
+
+"Hullo!" he said. "What is the matter now?"
+
+"I thought I should see something quite different," said the Princess,
+plaintively.
+
+"So you would, my little dear," cried the wymp. "I was only telling you
+what _I_ saw. Give me those two ridiculous little hands of yours, and
+you shall see everything that I didn't."
+
+This time the Princess Gentianella did say "Oh!" and she said it because
+she found herself sitting on the top of her wall, with all the world on
+the other side of it lying stretched out before her, for miles and
+miles and miles. She did not see very much at first, though, for she
+looked no further than the little corner of it that lay just under her
+eyes.
+
+"Why," said the Princess, softly, "there is a garden on the other side
+of my wall. And only look, there is a real Prince in the middle of it!"
+
+She turned round to tell her wymp all about it, but the wymp had other
+work to do and was already on his way to the back of the sun. So there
+was nothing for it but to look over the wall again, and this time the
+Prince glanced up and saw her.
+
+Now, Prince Amaryllis had been waiting a great many days for some one to
+appear at the top of the wall, but now that some one really had appeared
+there and was looking so extremely glad to see him, he suddenly found he
+had nothing whatever to say to her. That is what occasionally happens to
+the most charming of princes. Fortunately, however, the Princess knew
+perfectly well what to say to him.
+
+"I knew there would be something nice on the other side of my wall," she
+cried. "The wymp was quite wrong, wasn't he?"
+
+"No doubt he was, if you say so," answered the Prince, who had never
+noticed the wymp at all. "But how is it, little lady, that you can see
+me?"
+
+The Princess opened her big eyes and stared at him. "How can I help
+seeing you, if you are there?" she asked.
+
+"But I'm not here, that's just it," explained Prince Amaryllis; "at
+least, I am not supposed to be. You see, I have been invisible all my
+life, and you are the first person, outside my own country, who has ever
+been able to see me. I am very glad you can see me," he added politely;
+"one gets a little tired sometimes of being heard and not seen."
+
+"When I was a little girl," said Princess Gentianella, drawing herself
+up to her full height, "I was always taught to be seen and not heard.
+That was very dull, too. But tell me, why is it that you are invisible?"
+
+"Alas!" said the Prince. "The whole of my country is invisible, too.
+Tell me what you can see, Princess, from the top of your wall."
+
+"I can see you," answered the little Princess, promptly.
+
+"But do you see nothing else?" asked Prince Amaryllis.
+
+The Princess shaded her eyes with her hand and looked away into the
+distance. "I can see a large flat plain, with no trees and no rivers
+and no people and no houses," she answered presently.
+
+Prince Amaryllis sighed. "You are looking right into my country," he
+said dolefully, "and it is every bit as full of trees and rivers and
+people and houses as anybody else's country. Do you not hear anything
+either?"
+
+"Oh, yes," said Princess Gentianella; "I can hear the murmur of voices
+and the ripple of rivers and the rustle of trees. I have heard those
+sounds all my life, but I thought they were in the wind."
+
+"Nothing of the sort," replied the Prince. "They are the sounds that
+belong to my country, where everybody is heard and not seen. It all
+began with a christening-party, a hundred years ago. My
+great-grandfather was King then, and he was the most absent-minded king
+that has ever ruled over us, and he forgot to ask the Witch to dance
+with him, which, of course, offended her deeply. And it happened that
+she was a witch who was always making experiments, so she experimented
+on my country at once by making it invisible, and it has been invisible
+ever since."
+
+"How strange!" said Princess Gentianella. "I never remember hearing any
+one talk about your country."
+
+"Of course not," sighed the Prince; "you can't expect people to talk
+about a thing that isn't there, can you? You have no idea how stupid it
+is to live in a place that no one can see."
+
+"But why does not someone disenchant your kingdom?" asked the Princess,
+who had read quite enough history to know that kingdoms are always
+disenchanted sooner or later.
+
+"That is what I am trying to do," answered Prince Amaryllis. "The spell
+can only be removed if a king's son will spend a whole year in this
+waste piece of ground and make it into a beautiful garden. But although
+I have been here nearly a year, I have not been able to make a single
+flower grow. It is a little tiresome," he added with another sigh, "for
+it is part of the spell that I shall have to be executed if I fail."
+
+"Dear me!" exclaimed the little Princess. "You are much too nice to be
+executed! Won't you let me come and play in your garden? Perhaps I might
+help you to make the flowers grow."
+
+Prince Amaryllis shook his head and smiled. "It is not a nice garden to
+play in," he said. "I think I will come and play in yours instead, and
+you shall teach me the way to make the flowers grow."
+
+So the Prince jumped over the wall into the Princess's garden, and they
+walked about, hand in hand, among all the bright flower-beds that the
+fairies had planted there. They did not play very much, though, for they
+had so many things to talk about; and they talked and talked and talked,
+without stopping a moment, for the rest of the afternoon. For all that,
+when tea-time came and the Prince went back into his own garden, he
+remembered all sorts of things he might have said to the Princess if he
+had only thought of them in time; while Princess Gentianella, in the
+middle of her second cup of tea, also remembered all the things she
+might have said to the Prince, only she had not said them. That is
+always the way with princes and princesses who are carefully brought up.
+
+After that, Princess Gentianella and Prince Amaryllis played together
+for a number of days. But they always played in the Princess's garden,
+because it was a much nicer garden to play in; and as for the Prince's
+garden, they seemed to have forgotten that altogether. Then, one
+afternoon, when the Princess ran out as usual into the hot sunshine, her
+Prince from over the wall met her with a very disconsolate face.
+
+"The year has come to an end," he told her, "and since I cannot make the
+flowers grow in my garden, I shall have to go and be executed as soon as
+the Witch sends for me."
+
+The little Princess's lips began to quiver, and her eyes grew large and
+round and shining. "It is too bad," she declared, "to execute a really
+nice Prince like you!"
+
+"Do not be distressed," replied Prince Amaryllis, in a resigned tone.
+"Now that I have seen you, little lady, I shall be almost glad to be
+executed."
+
+"You are talking nonsense," declared the Princess. "Why do you want to
+be executed?"
+
+"Because, even if I knew the way to make the flowers grow," he replied,
+"my country would not be disenchanted unless I married Anemone, the
+Witch's daughter, as well. And, of course, I would sooner be executed
+than do that!"
+
+"What!" exclaimed the Princess; "you have promised to marry a witch's
+daughter? Do you mean to say that all this while I have been playing
+with somebody else's Prince?"
+
+There was no doubt that the Princess Gentianella was extremely angry;
+and the Prince could not help thinking that she was just a little bit
+unreasonable as well.
+
+"You see, it was part of the disenchantment," he explained. "If _you_
+had to be invisible all your life, you would promise anything to get
+disenchanted. Besides," he added, as the Princess showed no signs of
+being appeased, "they told me that Anemone, although a witch's daughter,
+was exceedingly beautiful."
+
+"What difference does that make?" demanded the Princess. "You ought to
+have told me before, that you were somebody else's Prince. You haven't
+been playing fair!"
+
+"It is true I forgot to mention it," said the Prince, a little crossly;
+"but one cannot remember everything, you know."
+
+Princess Gentianella gathered up her train with much dignity and turned
+her back on the Prince.
+
+"People who are as forgetful as that deserve to be invisible," she
+observed haughtily; and with that she swept up the garden path and into
+the palace. She lost all her dignity, however, as soon as she was out of
+the Prince's sight; and it was a very doleful little Princess who came
+to take tea with her royal parents that afternoon. When she even went so
+far as to say that she preferred bread-and-butter to plum-cake, the
+King and Queen began to be seriously alarmed.
+
+"What is the matter with the child?" asked the Queen of the King.
+
+"Perhaps she has a sunstroke," suggested the King, who thought that only
+illness could possibly prevent a daughter of his from eating her
+plum-cake at tea-time. The Queen knew better, but she waited until the
+King had gone back into his study before she said anything. Then she
+said the very best thing possible.
+
+"What did you see when you looked over your wall, little daughter?" she
+asked.
+
+"There was a prince on the other side," confessed the Princess
+Gentianella.
+
+"To be sure, there was," smiled the Queen. "There is always a prince on
+the other side; but why should that make you unhappy? Is he not a nice
+prince?"
+
+"He is a _real_ Prince," said her little daughter; "and I should not be
+at all unhappy if he had not just told me that he is somebody else's
+Prince!"
+
+"Never mind," said the Queen, consolingly; "you will soon find another
+prince in your garden."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"But not _that_ Prince," wept the poor little Princess.
+
+"One prince is much the same as another," said the Queen; but she did
+not think so for a moment, and no more did the little Princess.
+
+Now, it was quite true that Prince Amaryllis had not been playing fair,
+and that his forgetfulness was enough to annoy the nicest little
+Princess in the world; but for all that, he was going to be executed,
+and it is difficult to be angry for long with anyone who is just going
+to be executed. So, when Princess Gentianella ran out once more into the
+sunshine on the following morning, she was fully prepared to make
+friends with her Prince from over the wall. She was greatly disturbed to
+find, however, that there was no one to make friends with; and although
+she called the Prince's name several times, not an answer came from the
+other side of the wall. Then the Princess Gentianella did what she had
+never been brave enough to do before,--she shut her eyes and jumped; and
+either she jumped higher than so small a princess ever jumped before, or
+else the wall was not nearly such a high wall as she had always thought
+it was, for the next moment she found herself on her two little feet in
+the very middle of the Prince's garden. She was very close to the
+invisible country now, and the people's voices were so loud that she
+could actually hear what they were saying. This was not really
+surprising, though, for they were all saying the same thing.
+
+"Our Prince cannot make the flowers grow, and the Witch has taken him
+away to be executed," was what they were saying.
+
+When the Princess Gentianella heard that, she dropped straight down on
+the ground and burst into tears, and her tears rained all over the
+garden in showers; and wherever they fell, the flowers began to
+grow,--first of all, snowdrops and primroses and daffodils, then red
+poppies and blue larkspurs and white lilies, then hollyhocks and
+nasturtiums and mignonette, and last of all, roses,--red roses, pink
+roses, yellow roses, all sorts of roses. And the scent from all these
+flowers was so delicious that the little Princess lifted her head at
+last and looked round.
+
+"Oh!" she cried, starting to her feet; "some one _has_ made the flowers
+grow in the Prince's garden!"
+
+"Some one certainly has," chuckled a voice from the top of the wall; and
+there sat the same wymp as before, looking just as though he had never
+gone away to the back of the sun at all. At the same instant, the
+people's voices sounded louder than ever from the kingdom close by.
+
+"The flowers have learned the way to grow in the Prince's garden," they
+were shouting; "and the Prince will not be executed, after all!"
+
+Princess Gentianella danced for joy, in and out of the Prince's bright
+flower-beds. "The Prince will not be executed, after all," she said,
+too.
+
+"And he will be able to marry Anemone, the Witch's beautiful daughter,"
+added the wymp.
+
+All the laughter died out of Princess Gentianella's face, and she looked
+up at the wymp in a very woe-begone manner indeed.
+
+"Oh," she said piteously, "I never thought of that. I--I had quite
+forgotten that he was somebody else's Prince."
+
+The wymp fairly wimpled when he saw the poor little Princess looking so
+unhappy. "Don't you fret about that, my little dear," he cried. "Do you
+suppose the Witch's daughter wants anybody else's Prince, either?"
+
+Princess Gentianella clapped her hands with delight. "Of course she
+doesn't!" she cried. "But perhaps she does not know he is somebody
+else's Prince."
+
+"Then go and tell her so," suggested the wymp; and before she had time
+to thank him for his advice he had gone off once more to the back of the
+sun.
+
+The little Princess did not stop to think about it, but just ran as fast
+as she could towards the invisible kingdom of Prince Amaryllis. It might
+seem a little difficult to run towards a place that did not appear to be
+there, but to any one who was in as great a hurry as the little Princess
+a thing like that was of very small consequence. So she ran and she ran
+and she ran, until the Prince's kingdom was really obliged to stop being
+invisible, for in all the hundred years that it had been bewitched no
+one had ever tried so hard to see it before. Besides, it would have been
+most impolite of anybody's kingdom to go on pretending that it was not
+there, when the Princess was so determined to pretend that it was; so in
+the end she suddenly found herself in the middle of a country that was
+as full of trees and rivers and people and houses as any other country,
+and the particular part of it in which she found herself was a nice
+green field full of woolly sheep.
+
+"What a charming kingdom!" exclaimed Princess Gentianella. "How green
+the trees are, and how fresh everything looks! Why, there is not a
+speck of dust to be seen."
+
+"Of course there isn't," answered a jolly little lamb, who was trying,
+as lambs will, to behave as though he had only two legs instead of four.
+"Dust, indeed! When a kingdom has not been seen for a hundred years,
+naturally it keeps fresher than a kingdom that any one can stare at.
+Nothing fades a kingdom like staring at it, you know. However, all this
+will soon be altered, for I hear that the Prince has made the flowers
+grow in his garden; so all he has to do now is to marry the Witch's
+daughter, and then we shall be disenchanted at last."
+
+"Oh no, you won't!" said Princess Gentianella, shaking her finger at him
+wisely.
+
+"Why not?" asked the lamb, standing still for the first time in his
+life.
+
+"Because the Prince is _not_ going to marry the Witch's daughter,"
+answered Princess Gentianella; and she ran on before the lamb had time
+to recover from his astonishment.
+
+Down a curly white road ran the little Princess, between two of the
+greenest hedges she had ever seen, until she came to a stile. Now, she
+had never climbed a stile in her life, so of course she did not know
+what to do next. However, there stood the stile waiting to be climbed,
+and there stood the Princess feeling very much inclined to cry, when it
+happened most fortunately that an old woodcutter came strolling along.
+He was a particularly cross-looking woodcutter, but the Princess was in
+far too great a hurry to notice that.
+
+"If you please," she said as politely as she could, "will you lift me
+over this great, big, high stile?"
+
+The woodcutter at once did as he was asked, and then was so surprised at
+his own kindness that he stood and stared at the little Princess.
+
+"Well, I never!" he exclaimed. "That's the first time in my life I ever
+did anything to please anybody. Are you a witch?"
+
+"No, but I am looking for one," said Princess Gentianella. "Can you tell
+me where she is?"
+
+"If you mean the one whose daughter is going to marry the Prince, I
+think I can," replied the woodcutter, who thought he might as well go on
+being kind, now that he had once begun.
+
+"That is certainly not the witch I mean," answered the Princess,
+promptly, "for the Prince is _not_ going to marry any witch's daughter!"
+And she ran on faster than ever.
+
+Presently she came to a brook that was covered with ice.
+
+"Dear me!" cried Princess Gentianella. "It was springtime round the
+corner, and here have I tumbled into the middle of winter!"
+
+A fish popped his head through the ice, and laughed from ear to
+ear,--two things that he could do quite easily, for he happened to be a
+skate. "The seasons have been mixed up in this country ever since we
+were bewitched, a hundred years ago," he said. "It is no use being
+particular about the time of year when there is no one to see what kind
+of weather you are having. If you stand on tiptoe you will see summer
+going on in the next field."
+
+"It must be very difficult to know what clothes to put on, when you take
+a walk in this country," remarked the Princess. "But, of course, it
+doesn't matter what you do wear when there is no one to look at you!"
+
+"Well, well," said the skate, "things will soon be altered, and the
+seasons will have to right themselves again, for I am told that Prince
+Amaryllis is going to marry the Witch's daughter, and so the country
+will be disenchanted at last."
+
+"Rubbish!" laughed the little Princess, knowingly. "Don't you believe
+everything you are told! The Prince is going to do nothing of the
+sort!"
+
+Then she ran away from the skate and the frozen brook, and she ran right
+out of winter into the middle of summer; and she might have gone on
+running until she reached the middle of autumn too, if she had not been
+stopped by an enormous sea-serpent who was lying stretched across the
+road. When the sea-serpent saw the Princess, of course he flapped his
+fifty-five fins at her, and lashed his tail about furiously, and growled
+in a hoarse, fishy voice. But the Princess mistook his fury for
+politeness. When one has lived in a garden with a wall round it and
+never seen a sea-serpent in one's life, one is apt to make these
+mistakes.
+
+"I am very pleased to meet you," she said, with her most charming smile;
+"I have often wanted to meet a dragon."
+
+"She calls me a dragon!" groaned the sea-serpent, foaming like the sea
+in a tempest; "and I am connected with the very best family of
+sea-serpents! What will people say next?"
+
+"I am very sorry," said the Princess, humbly. "You see, I thought, as
+you were not in the sea--"
+
+"I was expecting that," interrupted the sea-serpent, bitterly. "No one
+ever will believe in me unless I stop in the sea. It is very
+depressing!"
+
+"I am sure I am very glad you have come out of the sea," said the
+Princess, politely, "because it has given me the pleasure of meeting
+you. But does it not make you very thirsty to lie in this hot dusty
+road?"
+
+"Not nearly so thirsty as stopping in the sea and having nothing but
+salt water to drink," answered the sea-serpent. "People do not realise
+what a thirsty life a sea-serpent has to lead. If they did," he added
+severely, "they would not stand in front of him and ask so many
+questions!"
+
+The Princess laughed merrily. "I do not want to stand here at all," she
+explained; "but unless you move your tail a little on one side, I really
+cannot get past."
+
+"If you do get past," growled the sea-serpent, "you will fall into the
+Witch's hands."
+
+"That is exactly where I want to fall!" cried Princess Gentianella;
+"only you must move your tail a little bit more than that, or else I am
+afraid I shall step on it."
+
+It was such a novelty for the sea-serpent to find some one who was not
+frightened of him, that he had not the heart to tell her that he was
+just going to eat her up. So he moved his tail out of the way, and
+Princess Gentianella blew a kiss to him from the tips of her little pink
+fingers and ran on as before.
+
+The next person she met was an old woman, who was picking thistles in a
+field.
+
+"I wonder why you are doing that!" said the Princess, opening her big
+blue eyes.
+
+"I am making an experiment, to see if I can find any one with so brave a
+heart that the thistles will not be able to hurt it," answered the old
+woman, mysteriously.
+
+"But does it not scratch your fingers to gather those large prickly
+thistles?" asked the little Princess.
+
+"Perhaps it does," the old woman said shortly; "but who do you suppose
+is going to gather them for me?"
+
+She seemed rather cross, but the Princess supposed it was because she
+had pricked her fingers so much.
+
+"Well, I am in a most tremendous hurry, but I think I can stop and help
+you," she answered; and down she dropped on her knees and began to pick
+thistles as fast as she could. And when the thistles saw what soft pink
+fingers were going to take hold of them, they at once bent back all
+their prickles and allowed the Princess to gather as many as she
+pleased without giving her so much as a scratch. When she had filled the
+old woman's apron for her, she began to run off at full speed, to make
+up for lost time. But the old woman called her back.
+
+"Stop!" she cried. "Where are you going?"
+
+"I am going to find the Witch's daughter," answered Princess
+Gentianella, looking back impatiently.
+
+"Oh, indeed!" said the old woman. "May I ask what you want with her?"
+
+"I want to tell her not to marry Prince Amaryllis, because he is not her
+Prince but somebody else's Prince," said Princess Gentianella.
+
+"Oh, indeed!" said the old woman again. "And whose Prince may he be,
+then?"
+
+"He is my Prince, of course!" answered the little Princess, laughing
+happily; and then away she ran across the field, and into the wood that
+lay beyond.
+
+In the wood, under a hazel-tree, sat a tall and beautiful girl, weeping
+bitterly.
+
+"Oh dear, oh dear!" said Princess Gentianella, mournfully. "How
+dreadfully sorry I am!"
+
+"Why?" asked the girl, looking up at her.
+
+"Because you are crying, to be sure," answered the Princess. "Will you
+tell me why you are so sad?"
+
+"My mother, who is always making experiments, wants me to marry a Prince
+I have never seen, just to see how we should like it," explained the
+girl. "And all the while, I am somebody else's Princess!"
+
+"That is very strange," remarked Princess Gentianella. "Now _I_ am sad
+because my Prince has got to marry Anemone, the Witch's beautiful
+daughter, and I am trying to find her to tell her that he is really my
+Prince. Do you think she will want to marry him, when she hears that he
+is somebody else's Prince?"
+
+The beautiful girl suddenly sprang to her feet and began to laugh
+joyfully. "I am sure she will not," she answered, "for _I_ am Anemone,
+the Witch's daughter. So nobody will have to marry anybody's Prince
+except her own, and the witch will not be able to make experiments any
+more!"
+
+"That is settled, then," said the little Princess, contentedly. "Now let
+us go and find our Princes. But supposing that I find your Prince first,
+how shall I know that he _is_ your Prince?"
+
+"His name is Hyacinth," answered the Witch's daughter.
+
+"How delightful!" cried Princess Gentianella, clapping her hands. "Then
+I shall find my youngest brother as well as my Prince. But do you know
+where they are?"
+
+Anemone, the Witch's daughter, began to look a little doubtful. "I have
+just remembered," she confessed, "that I sent Hyacinth to kill your
+Prince, only a few minutes before you came along. Do not be anxious,
+however," she added hastily, "for perhaps he will not be able to find
+him."
+
+The Princess Gentianella was not at all anxious. "Nobody could possibly
+be strong enough to kill my Prince," she observed; "and as for Hyacinth,
+he will be quite safe, for Prince Amaryllis is much too nice to hurt any
+one!"
+
+She proved to be right, for in another minute they saw the two Princes
+coming towards them arm in arm. And if this should seem extraordinary,
+it must be remembered that it all took place in an enchanted wood, where
+a witch had been making experiments for hundreds and hundreds of years.
+
+"There was no necessity to kill him, dearest," cried Prince Hyacinth,
+"for he is somebody else's Prince."
+
+He held out his arms as he spoke, and into them ran Anemone, the Witch's
+daughter, and of course there is no need to tell into whose arms the
+little Princess ran. After that, there was nothing to be heard in the
+wood except kissing, until the Witch suddenly stepped on the scenes.
+
+"Cobwebs and broomsticks! What is the meaning of this?" she cried
+furiously.
+
+Three of them turned round and faced her in an extremely nervous manner;
+for, after all, a witch is a witch, and they knew fast enough that she
+could turn them into any shape she pleased. The Princess Gentianella did
+not seem nervous, however.
+
+"Why, you are the nice old lady I met in the field," she exclaimed.
+
+"I believe I am," said the Witch, who had never been called a nice old
+lady in her life before, and was not quite sure how to take it.
+
+"I have found my Prince, you see," continued the little Princess,
+smiling away as happily as possible.
+
+"So it seems," said the Witch. She was afraid to say more than that, in
+case the Princess should find out who she was, and she thought she would
+like to be a nice old lady a little longer first.
+
+"And have you found any one yet who has so brave a heart that the
+thistles cannot hurt it?" asked Princess Gentianella.
+
+"I think I have," said the Witch.
+
+"Then we have all found what we want," smiled Princess Gentianella, "and
+the Witch cannot surely be so unkind as to refuse to disenchant the
+kingdom, just because her daughter doesn't want to marry my Prince! Do
+you think she can?"
+
+The Witch dropped her thistles and held out her hands to the eager
+Princess. "My dear little girl," she said, "the kingdom was disenchanted
+the moment you came into it. As for the Witch, there is no Witch any
+longer, for she retired into private life as a nice old lady, just ten
+minutes ago. Now, as you all seem to have sorted yourselves the right
+way, the best thing you can do is to go off home as fast as you can."
+
+No doubt that is where Anemone must have gone with her Prince, for when
+the little Princess looked round and found herself standing once more in
+her own garden, there was no one with her except Prince Amaryllis.
+
+"_Now_ may I come and play in your garden?" asked Princess Gentianella,
+softly.
+
+The Prince still shook his head. "I have a much better idea than that,"
+he said; "we will pull down the wall and make it all into one garden."
+
+
+
+
+The Tears of Princess Prunella
+
+
+There is no doubt that the Princess Prunella would have been the most
+charming little girl on either side of the sun, if she had not been so
+exceedingly cross and discontented. She was as pretty as any one could
+wish to see, and as accomplished as all the gifts of Fairyland could
+make her; and she had every bit of happiness that the love of her
+parents and the wit of her fairy godmother could put in her way. And yet
+she grumbled and grumbled and grumbled!
+
+"Can you not try to be happy, just for five minutes?" asked the Queen,
+in despair.
+
+"How can you expect me to be happy, even for five minutes, when every
+five minutes is exactly like the last five minutes?" sighed the little
+Princess.
+
+"It is tea-time, your Highness," said the head nurse, coaxingly, "and
+there are pink sugar cakes for tea!"
+
+"There were pink sugar cakes yesterday," pouted the Princess. "There are
+always pink sugar cakes unless there are white sugar cakes, and I am
+equally tired of them both. Can you not tell me something new?"
+
+"Let her go without her tea," said the King, who was rather tired of
+having such a cross little daughter. But the Queen only smiled.
+
+"The child wants a change," she remarked. "It must be very dull to play
+alone all day."
+
+"Dull!" exclaimed the King. "Why should it be dull? Has not her
+godmother given her such wonderful toys that they can play with her as
+well as be played with?" This was quite true, for the very ball that the
+Princess threw to the other end of the nursery could catch itself and
+throw itself back to her; and it is not every ball that can do that.
+"What more can the child want?" demanded the King, crossly.
+
+The Queen, however, thought there might be something more. "We must find
+her a playfellow," she said wisely.
+
+"Stuff and nonsense!" protested the King. "Why should we bring any more
+crying children into the palace? However, you must do as you like, I
+suppose."
+
+The King always told the Queen to do as she liked when he was tired of
+the conversation; so the Queen smiled again and issued a proclamation
+at once, to tell the whole world that the Princess Prunella wanted some
+one to play with, and would be ready to choose a playfellow that day
+week, at twelve o'clock in the morning. Now, it is not often that one
+gets a chance of playing with a King's daughter, so it is no wonder
+that, when the Princess followed her royal parents into the great hall
+on the appointed day, she found it filled from end to end with all the
+little princes and princesses and all the little counts and countesses
+and all the little dukes and duchesses that the surrounding kingdoms
+could produce.
+
+"I never had a more excellent idea," said the Queen, as she seated
+herself on the throne and looked down at the crowd of children.
+"Prunella has talked of nothing else for a whole week, and she has not
+been heard to grumble once."
+
+"That's all very well," observed the King, a little uneasily; "but it is
+quite clear that she cannot play with them all, and who knows that so
+much disappointment will not lead to a war?"
+
+The Queen did not answer but turned to her little daughter, who stood by
+her side. "Do not be in a hurry," she said to her. "So many faces are
+confusing at first, and you might regret it afterwards if you made a
+mistake."
+
+But Princess Prunella showed no signs of being in a hurry. She just
+glanced over the sea of faces that were turned towards her, and then
+looked speechlessly at her mother. The smiles had all gone from her
+face, and the big blue eyes were filled with tears.
+
+"Why, they are all exactly alike!" she said piteously. "I cannot tell
+one from another." And to the astonishment of every one in the room, she
+dropped down on the steps of the throne and began to cry.
+
+"Dear, dear! What is to be done?" exclaimed the Queen, in much alarm.
+"It will look so very bad if all the children have to be sent home
+again!"
+
+"It will certainly lead to a war," was all the King said; and then they
+both looked helplessly at their sobbing little daughter. As for all the
+children, they were so surprised at hearing how much alike they were
+that they said nothing at all; and it is difficult to tell what would
+have been the end of the matter, if the Princess had not suddenly jumped
+to her feet again and pointed towards the door.
+
+"There is the Prince I should like to play with," she exclaimed. "_He_
+is not like the others, for he has a wonderful look on his face."
+
+Everybody looked round at the doorway; and, sure enough, there stood a
+boy whom no one had noticed before. "Come here, Prince," commanded the
+Princess, raising her voice haughtily; "you may kiss my hand if you
+like."
+
+But the boy drew back with a bewildered air and shook his head. Princess
+Prunella stamped her foot angrily.
+
+"How dare you hesitate when I tell you to come here?" she cried. At
+this, however, the strange boy turned and hastened out of the room
+altogether; and a loud murmur of astonishment rose from the children.
+
+The King's daughter had never been disobeyed in her life before, and for
+a moment she was too astonished to speak.
+
+"Who is he? What is his name?" she demanded at last.
+
+There was a pause, broken presently by the shrill voice of one of the
+pages. "Please, your Highness, it is only deaf Robert, the minstrel's
+son," he said.
+
+"Deaf!" repeated the Princess. "What is that?"
+
+"It means that he cannot hear anything, little daughter," explained the
+Queen; "so, you see, he would not do for a playfellow at all. Besides,
+he is not even a Prince. Can you not choose one of these others
+instead?"
+
+The Princess, however, could do nothing of the kind. "All these are
+alike," she said again; "but the minstrel's son has a wonderful look on
+his face, and I will have no one else for a playfellow!"
+
+So all the children went sadly back to their homes, and wondered why
+they were so much alike; and the whole court was made uncomfortable once
+more by the sulkiness of Princess Prunella.
+
+"Your Highness's best wax doll has not been out for two whole days,"
+suggested the head nurse.
+
+The Princess snatched the doll from her hands and threw it on the floor.
+
+"If you will not let me play with a boy who is deaf, how can you expect
+me to play with a _doll_?" she asked; and although, no doubt, there was
+much in what she said, it was hardly the way in which to speak to the
+head nurse. Indeed, there would have been a serious disturbance in the
+royal nursery the very next minute, if the Princess's cream-coloured
+pony had not suddenly trotted round from the stable of its own accord,
+and put it into her head to go for a ride.
+
+Now, the Princess's pony was of course a fairy pony; so when he ran away
+with her in the forest, that day, it was not to be supposed that he
+would run away with her for nothing. He took her, in fact, for a real
+fairy ride, all through a fairy forest, that began by being quite a baby
+forest and then grew and grew, the deeper she went into it, until it
+ended in being quite a grown-up forest. And the pony never stopped
+running away until he reached a dear little grey house, that was set in
+the brightest of flower gardens, right in the middle of the forest.
+
+The Princess slipped off his back and pushed open the little gate and
+walked into the flower garden. Any one else might have been surprised to
+find deaf Robert sitting there, in the middle of the trim green lawn,
+but after a fairy ride one is never surprised at anything; so the
+Princess's heart just gave one big jump for joy, and she ran straight up
+to him and took his hand.
+
+"Poor deaf boy! poor deaf boy!" she said softly. Certainly she was not
+behaving like a King's daughter, for she ought to have been extremely
+angry with him for disobeying her in the morning, instead of which she
+spoke as gently to him as any ordinary little girl might have done. But
+then, as he could not hear what she said to him, what was the use of
+speaking like a princess?
+
+"Poor deaf boy!" she repeated, bending over him; "no wonder you look so
+dull and unhappy!"
+
+It was the first time in her life that she had forgotten she was a
+princess, and she was quite surprised at the gentleness of her own
+voice. She was still more surprised when the deaf boy rose to his feet
+and bowed very low and answered her.
+
+"I was only unhappy, Princess, because I could not hear what you said to
+me this morning," he explained.
+
+"Oh!" cried the Princess. "You _can_ hear me now!"
+
+"Ah, yes," said deaf Robert; "I can hear you now, because you speak so
+kindly. It is only when people are angry and speak roughly that I cannot
+hear them. That is why they say I am deaf."
+
+"Have you always been deaf?" asked the Princess, wonderingly.
+
+"Ever since the wymps came to my christening," answered the minstrel's
+son. "For when they asked my father what gift he would choose for me, he
+chose that I should be deaf to every sound that was not beautiful."
+
+"So that is why you have such a wonderful look on your face," said
+Princess Prunella. "I wish the wymps went to everybody's christening!"
+
+Deaf Robert shook his head. "If they had not come to mine," he remarked,
+"I should have been able to hear what you said to me this morning."
+
+"Never mind!" said the Princess. "Come back to the palace with me now; I
+will never speak crossly to you again, and then you will always be able
+to hear what I say."
+
+"No, no," answered Robert, shrinking back. "I cannot come to the town;
+it is so silent there, it frightens me."
+
+"Silent?" echoed the Princess. "Surely, it is the forest that is
+silent!"
+
+"Oh, no," said the minstrel's son, smiling; "the forest is full of
+sound. Can you not hear them all talking,--the bees and the flowers and
+the great pine-trees?"
+
+Princess Prunella listened. "No," she said, shaking her head, "I can
+hear nothing." Then she took the deaf boy's hands and pulled him towards
+the gate. "Come back to the town with me," she said eagerly. "It is true
+that you cannot hear the other people's voices; but you will always be
+able to hear _me_, and that is ever so much more important!"
+
+So the minstrel's son went back to the palace with Princess Prunella;
+and when the King and Queen saw how happy their little daughter was at
+last, they said nothing more about deaf Robert not being a prince, but
+got over the difficulty by making him a Marquis on the spot and giving
+him the appointment of Playfellow-in-chief to her Royal Highness. A
+magnificent banquet was given to celebrate this important event, at
+which several speeches were made by the King and several tunes were
+played by the band; but as the speeches were exceedingly pompous and the
+tunes were exceedingly noisy, the new Marquis, for whom they were
+intended, heard neither one nor the other. However, he heard every word
+that the little Princess whispered in his ear, and perhaps that was all
+that he wished to hear.
+
+Never had life passed so peacefully at the palace as in the days that
+followed. The Princess was never heard to utter an angry word, and she
+went about with a contented look on her face that cheered the hearts of
+all who knew her. It was indeed a happy day for the court when the
+minstrel's son came to play with the King's daughter, and every one
+rejoiced that the King and the Queen had been wise enough to let their
+little daughter have her own way. But all this while no one thought of
+the minstrel's son.
+
+Now, anybody might suppose that a minstrel's son, who suddenly found
+himself made into a Marquis and Playfellow-in-chief to a Princess, would
+be the happiest boy in the world. And yet, although he grew fonder every
+day of his little playfellow, deaf Robert was the saddest person in the
+whole court. He grew more and more silent as the days went on, until at
+last even the Princess noticed that he was changed.
+
+"The wonderful look has gone from your face," she said to him. "Can it
+be that you do not feel happy at court?"
+
+Then the boy-Marquis told her the truth. "I am unhappy because I cannot
+hear the sounds of the town," he said. "Will not your father go and live
+in the forest for a change, so that we can play there together, instead
+of in this horrible, silent place?"
+
+"But I don't want to go and play in the forest," objected the Princess.
+"There are no people in the forest; and I should forget I was a person
+myself, if I had nothing to talk to but the flowers and the trees."
+
+For the first time since they had played together, deaf Robert
+remembered that he was nearly two years older than the little Princess;
+and he smiled in a superior manner. "That is only because you hear all
+the wrong things," he said. "If you could once hear the sounds of the
+forest, you would never want to come back to the town."
+
+The Princess turned red with anger, and she opened her mouth to give the
+minstrel's son a thorough good scolding, which would certainly have
+surprised him had he been able to hear it. But she remembered in time
+that he would not be able to hear it, so she sighed impatiently and
+answered him as softly as she could.
+
+"You are quite mistaken," she said, putting her chin in the air. "If you
+were a real boy you would understand." And with that she turned and left
+him. It was certainly annoying not to be able to lose her temper
+whenever she felt inclined, but there was nothing to prevent her from
+remembering that she was a princess.
+
+That afternoon, the Princess pricked her finger, and the minstrel's son
+found out that what she had said was quite true, and he was not a real
+boy at all. For, of course, the Princess did what any other little girl
+of twelve years old would have done, and burst into tears; while the
+minstrel's son, who was quite unable to hear her sobs, only stared at
+her solemnly, and wondered why her pretty round face had suddenly
+twisted itself into such a strange expression.
+
+"What are you doing, Prunella?" he asked her gravely.
+
+"Doing!" wept the Princess. "Why, I am crying, of course! That is what
+you would be doing if you had pricked your finger as badly as I have."
+She held out her small white finger as she spoke, but the minstrel's son
+only stared at her as solemnly as before.
+
+"Crying? What is that?" he asked. "And why should you do anything so
+useless? Surely, it would be better to fetch a doctor or a piece of
+sticking-plaster."
+
+Princess Prunella came to the end of her patience. It had been bad
+enough to exist for six whole weeks without being allowed to lose her
+temper once, but now that she found she could not even cry with any
+pleasure, she felt it was more than any little girl of twelve years old
+could be expected to bear.
+
+"It isn't sticking-plaster that I want," she said miserably. "When
+people cry, they want to be comforted, of course."
+
+"Do they?" said deaf Robert, looking perplexed. "But if I cannot hear
+you cry, how am I to comfort you?"
+
+The Princess was far too cross to be reasonable, though she managed to
+remember that it was no use letting her crossness appear in her voice.
+"That's just it!" she sobbed. "You ought to be able to hear me cry, and
+then you would be a real boy!"
+
+And the Princess pitied herself so much for being forced to play with
+some one who was not real, that she buried her face in her hands and
+wept more than ever. She half hoped, even then, that deaf Robert would
+come and kiss her and make friends again, as any nice boy would have
+done at once; but deaf Robert did nothing of the kind, and when she at
+last took her hands from her eyes, her playfellow was gone.
+
+Truly, the forest had never looked so beautiful as on that day when the
+minstrel's son hastened through it on his way to his old home. The
+flowers looked their best, and the birds sang their merriest, and the
+trees bent their greenest boughs, to give him a welcome; but the boy
+with the wonderful look on his face, who had lived among them for so
+long, never paused so much as to glance at them, and they only had time
+to notice, as he passed them by, that the wonderful look was no longer
+there. On he hurried until he came to the little grey house, set in its
+garden of bright-coloured flowers; and he pushed open the gate and
+walked in, just as his Princess had done six weeks ago.
+
+The minstrel was at home, this time, and he was sitting on the doorstep
+in the sunshine. He had just composed a new song, and that always made
+him extremely happy; but he sighed a little when he saw his son come in
+at the gate, for he, too, had no difficulty in seeing that the wonderful
+look had gone from the boy's face.
+
+"What is the matter, my son?" he asked anxiously.
+
+Deaf Robert wasted no time in greeting him. "Father," he cried, "why did
+you ask the wymps to my christening?"
+
+"That is easily answered," said the minstrel, soothingly. "It was
+because I wished you to hear nothing but beautiful sounds all your
+life."
+
+"But what sounds do you call beautiful?" demanded his son.
+
+The minstrel smiled. "Can you not hear my music?" he asked.
+
+"Yes, yes," said deaf Robert; "but what else?"
+
+It had never struck the minstrel that there need be anything else, and
+he hesitated a little. "Well," he said at last, "can you not hear the
+sounds of the forest?"
+
+Deaf Robert looked up at the pine-trees overhead and down to the flowers
+at his feet. "I used to be able to," he said sadly, "but even the forest
+has grown silent now." Then he clenched his fists and looked imploringly
+at his father. "Must I live to the end of my days without hearing any of
+the things that other boys hear?" he cried.
+
+"You are a little unreasonable, my son," said the minstrel. "Are not the
+beautiful sounds of life enough for you?"
+
+"Enough?" said deaf Robert. "I want much, much more than that, father.
+Why, I want to hear the Princess cry!"
+
+"That is nonsense!" exclaimed the minstrel. "Tears make a most
+unpleasant sound, and you would be extremely disappointed if you were to
+hear the Princess cry."
+
+The minstrel's son drew himself up proudly. "You do not understand; you
+are not real either," he said. "The tears of _my_ Princess make the
+sweetest sound in the world, and I am not going to rest until I learn
+how to hear it." Then he turned and walked through the gate and out into
+the forest once more.
+
+The minstrel looked after him and sighed. "It was the best gift I could
+think of," he murmured; "it was the one I would have chosen for myself.
+It is true," he added thoughtfully, "that I never wanted to play with a
+King's daughter."
+
+The minstrel's son wandered aimlessly through the forest,--the forest
+that he had once liked so well because it was all his, and that he only
+liked now because he had found his little Princess in it; and there he
+might have been wandering still, if he had not suddenly met a wymp. This
+was not really surprising in that particular forest, for it was just the
+kind of forest in which any boy of fourteen might at any minute meet a
+wymp; but for all that, deaf Robert was just a little bit startled when
+the wymp suddenly dropped in his path from the tree above and nodded at
+him.
+
+"Hullo!" said the wymp. "What is the matter with you?"
+
+"I am very unhappy, because I am not a real boy," explained deaf
+Robert.
+
+"Dear me! How is that?" asked the wymp, pretending to be surprised.
+
+"Well, _you_ ought to know," answered deaf Robert. "It is all because
+the wymps came to my christening."
+
+"Nothing of the sort!" cried the wymp, indignantly. "It is all because
+your father insisted on knowing better than we did, and we let him have
+his own way. If the wymps had not been at your christening, you would
+not even _want_ to be a real boy. So you cannot hear the Princess cry,
+eh? That's a good wympish joke, that is!" And the wymp stood on his head
+and choked with laughter.
+
+"It is all very well for you to laugh," complained the minstrel's son.
+"You don't know how unpleasant it is to be a boy without being a real
+boy."
+
+The wymp came down on his toes again and stopped laughing. "Then why
+don't you go and learn to be a real boy?" he asked in surprise.
+
+"How can I find out the way?" asked deaf Robert.
+
+"You ridiculous boy!" exclaimed the wymp. "Why, the first person you
+meet will be able to tell you that!"
+
+Deaf Robert had no time to thank him for his information, for the wymp
+began turning somersaults the moment he had finished speaking, and he
+went on turning them until he turned into nothing at all, and there was
+no more wymp to be seen. Then the minstrel's son walked on through the
+forest; and for three days and three nights he met no one at all, but on
+the morning of the fourth day he came to the very edge of the forest,
+and there he saw an old woman sitting by the side of a blackberry bush.
+
+"Hurrah!" cried deaf Robert, waving his cap. "Do you know that you are
+the first person I have met, and that you are going to tell me how to
+become a real boy?"
+
+"I will tell you at once," said the old woman, smiling, "for you come
+straight to the point and do not beat about the bush. This is what you
+must do, then:--something brave and something kind and something foolish
+and something wise. If you are not a real boy after that, it will be
+your own fault!" Then she walked round the blackberry bush and
+disappeared; and although deaf Robert forgot what she had just said
+about him and beat about that bush in good earnest, he never saw any
+more of her.
+
+Then the minstrel's son walked straight on in search of a brave deed to
+do; and this did not take him long, for there are always plenty of
+brave deeds waiting to be done by some one. So, long before the sun was
+above his head that day, he came to a castle where a beautiful Princess
+was being kept captive by a cruel old giant,--all because he was cruel,
+and for no other reason at all. And when deaf Robert saw the Princess
+weeping behind the bars of her prison window, he was reminded of his own
+little Princess whom he had left weeping on the nursery floor; and that
+made him call on the giant instantly to come out and be killed. The
+giant laughed a great laugh and came out into the courtyard, not to be
+killed, but to kill the minstrel's son instead; but before he had time
+to do that, the minstrel's son had managed to kill _him_, and there was
+an end of the cruel old giant.
+
+"That is the bravest deed I have ever seen done!" cried the Princess,
+when he fetched her out of her dungeon.
+
+"Brave deeds are easily done, then," said deaf Robert; but he was glad
+enough, all the same, to hear that he had done the first part of his
+task. The next thing he did was to take the beautiful Princess back to
+her own country; and that seemed to him a great waste of time, for he
+could not certainly do his kind deed so long as he had the Princess on
+his hands. But when they reached her country and the Princess told her
+father how deaf Robert had come out of his way to bring her home, the
+old King was pleased, and asked him what reward he would like for his
+trouble. "For," he said, "you have done the kindest deed any one could
+possibly think of."
+
+"No reward for me!" laughed deaf Robert; "for there is my kind deed done
+without my knowing it!" And off he set once more on his travels.
+
+After that, the minstrel's son wandered about for a great many days; for
+neither a wise nor a foolish deed could he find to do. Sometimes, when
+he thought he had been wise, the people told him he was cruel, and drove
+him out of their country; and sometimes, when he was sure he had been
+foolish, they only praised him for his kindness. He grew tired and
+footsore, and his clothes became old and ragged, and he almost forgot
+that he had once been a Marquis and Playfellow-in-chief to a princess.
+But he never forgot how the little Princess Prunella had looked, as she
+sat on the nursery floor and wept with sobs that he was not able to
+hear. So two years passed away, and still he had not learned how to be a
+real boy.
+
+One day, as he walked along a country road, he came upon a girl driving
+cows.
+
+"Why are you looking so sad?" she asked him.
+
+"Because I left my Princess crying in her nursery two years ago, and I
+have been away from her ever since," answered the boy, simply.
+
+The girl burst out laughing. "Well," she exclaimed, "that was a foolish
+thing to do!"
+
+"Foolish?" shouted deaf Robert. "Did you say _foolish_?"
+
+"To be sure I did," laughed the girl. "Could anything be more foolish
+than to keep away from some one whom you want to be with?"
+
+"Then I will go back to her this very instant," declared the minstrel's
+son.
+
+"And that would be the wisest thing you could do," answered the girl;
+and she immediately disappeared, cows and all, which just shows that she
+must have been a wymp all the while.
+
+"Well," said deaf Robert, "there are my wise and my foolish deeds done
+together, and now I am a real boy!"
+
+Then off he set homewards as fast as he could go; and although it had
+taken him two years to come away from home, it only took him two hours
+to get back again, so it is clear that the wymps must have had a hand
+in that, too. And just about tea-time he stood outside the nursery door
+in the palace of his own little Princess.
+
+It is well to remember that the wymps had come to the christening of the
+minstrel's son; otherwise it might seem a little wonderful that the
+Princess Prunella should have pricked her finger again, on the very day
+that her Playfellow-in-chief came back to her. Anyhow, that is what had
+happened; and as the minstrel's son stood outside the door and listened,
+he heard the softest and the sweetest and the prettiest sound he had
+ever heard in his life.
+
+"Hurrah!" he cried. "At last I can hear the Princess cry!" And he burst
+open the door and ran into the room, all in his rags and his tatters,
+and knelt down to comfort the King's daughter.
+
+"Only look at my finger," wept Princess Prunella, as she showed him her
+little hand. Truly, it was impossible to tell which of her small white
+fingers the Princess had pricked, but as the minstrel's son kissed every
+one of them in turn, it is clear that he must have healed the right one;
+and that, of course, was why the Princess stopped crying at once.
+
+Then she looked at her old playfellow and laughed for joy to see him
+there again. "The wonderful look has come back into your face," she
+said, "but it is ever so much more wonderful than before!"
+
+"Dear little playfellow," whispered the minstrel's son, "I can hear the
+forest sounds again, too; but you were right all the time, and the
+sounds of the town are much more charming than the sounds of the
+forest."
+
+"Oh, no," declared the Princess. "There you are quite mistaken, for the
+sounds of the forest are more beautiful by far."
+
+And it is a fact that they have been disputing the point ever since.
+
+
+
+
+The Palace on the Floor
+
+
+Prince Picotee had just built a fairy palace on the nursery floor, and
+he sat back on his heels and looked at it with pride. Surely, no one had
+ever built so fine a palace before in the space of thirteen minutes and
+a half! Not only were there two lofty towers that soared proudly upwards
+until they were actually as tall as the Prince himself, but there was a
+great arched doorway as well, with a flight of steps leading down from
+it away under the nursery table; and there was even a drawbridge, made
+of a single big brick and suspended by a piece of string. All this,
+however, might be found in anybody's palace; what made the Prince's
+palace different from every one else's was just the way the windows were
+built. They were not built in rows, like ordinary windows, so that any
+one could guess how dull and square the rooms were inside; but they
+appeared here and there as if by accident, sometimes at a corner,
+sometimes on the top of another window, sometimes under the
+battlements, wherever, in fact, the little builder-Prince had felt
+inclined to put a window; and the most wonderful thing of all was that,
+however much he tried to peep through them, he could not possibly see
+what the rooms were like beyond. So the palace he had built himself was
+full of beautiful halls and rooms and passages that no one would ever be
+able to see.
+
+"No doubt," exclaimed Prince Picotee, "this is the most wonderful palace
+that ever was built!"
+
+Just then Dimples, the Prime Minister's little daughter, ran into the
+room. "How absurd!" she cried. "Why, it isn't a real palace at all!"
+
+"It is real enough for me," said Prince Picotee. "When I am grown up and
+a king, I shall have a palace exactly like this to live in."
+
+Dimples came and sat on the floor by the Prince. "_I_ shouldn't like to
+live in a palace that would tumble down directly you pulled out the
+bottom brick," she observed, placing her fat little finger on the brick
+as she spoke.
+
+The Prince seized her hand hastily. "There will be no girls in my
+palace," he said with dignity; "it is only girls who want to pull down
+other people's palaces."
+
+Dimples put her head on one side and examined the palace afresh. "How
+untidy your steps are!" she remarked. "The top one is shorter than the
+others, and there is a join in the middle of the second one."
+
+The Prince felt a little hurt. "It is not my fault if the bricks are not
+all the same length," he said. "Besides, those things do not matter.
+Only look at my beautiful windows!"
+
+Dimples looked, and burst out laughing. "What funny windows!" she
+exclaimed. "Why, you can't see into the rooms! What is the use of having
+a palace when you don't know what it is like inside?"
+
+"You don't understand," answered Prince Picotee. "Anybody can see inside
+an ordinary palace; this is a particular palace, you see."
+
+Dimples did not see at all; so she changed the conversation. "What are
+all those soldiers doing on the table?" she asked.
+
+"They are not on the table," explained the Prince. "They have been
+marching since yesterday morning, and they are on the road to my fairy
+palace." He then began to station his soldiers on the battlements of the
+two lofty towers.
+
+"I suppose you think your wooden soldiers are real, too!" laughed the
+Prime Minister's daughter.
+
+"Hush!" whispered the Prince. "If you speak so loud, they will hear you,
+and it would never do for them to know that you called them wooden.
+_Anything_ might happen to you if you made them really angry!"
+
+"You are only talking nonsense," said Dimples, which was what she always
+said when she did not understand what the Prince meant. At the same time
+she could not help being struck by the look on the face of the soldier
+that Prince Picotee had just picked up. It was the captain of the little
+regiment; and as the Prince placed him at the post of danger on the
+bottom brick of all, she felt sure that she saw a flush of anger on his
+painted wooden cheeks and a gleam of mischief in his round black eyes.
+"He is only a toy soldier," said Dimples, tossing her head; but she did
+not say it aloud, and it is certain that she felt a little
+uncomfortable, all the rest of that day, about the look on the captain's
+face.
+
+Now, Dimples had come to stay with the Prince for a few days, and it
+happened that the room in which she slept was next to the royal nursery;
+and right in the middle of the night--which, as every one knows, is the
+time for wymps and fairies to be about--she awoke suddenly with a most
+unpleasant start. There, by the side of her bed, stood one of the
+Prince's wooden soldiers, shouldering his wooden gun as though he had
+never done anything else for the whole of his life,--which was certainly
+the truth,--and holding himself just for all the world as though he were
+glued together. He was certainly a most military-looking soldier, and if
+Dimples had not been a particularly brave little girl, she might have
+been decidedly frightened.
+
+"What do you want?" she asked, sitting up and rubbing her eyes.
+
+"Follow me. Prince's palace. Captain's orders," said the little soldier,
+in three jerks; and he turned round and marched stiffly towards the
+door. His tone was hard; but then, of course, his voice, like everything
+else about him, was made of wood. Dimples made no fuss about obeying
+him, for she was always ready for an adventure; so out of bed she jumped
+without any more ado, and followed him into the next room. It took them
+several minutes to get there, because the soldier walked so very slowly;
+but this, again, was not surprising, for people with wooden legs cannot
+be expected to walk as fast as ordinary folk.
+
+When they reached the nursery, Dimples gave a cry of surprise. It was
+evident that the Prince's palace had sprung upwards since the afternoon,
+for the two towers were now far above her head, while as for the
+drawbridge, by the time she had crossed it and mounted the magnificent
+flight of steps, she found herself quite out of breath. "Perhaps it is a
+real palace, after all," she said doubtfully.
+
+"Don't mutter. Bad manners. Captain's prisoner," said the soldier in
+three jerks, as before.
+
+Dimples did not answer, for at that moment she stepped inside the
+Prince's palace and was too breathless with excitement to utter a word.
+It was indeed no ordinary hall in which she found herself; it was built
+entirely of oak beams of different lengths, so that in one place the
+ceiling was low and in another place it was high, in one corner there
+were several doors, and in another there were several windows; here an
+arch tottered perilously over an opening, and there a solitary pillar
+blocked up the whole of a doorway. It was truly a wonderful palace, as
+the Prince had said, but it was a little surprising at first sight.
+Dimples, however, had no time to think about it, for at that moment a
+stern voice was heard coming from below the floor of the hall.
+
+"Bring the prisoner here!" said the voice. Dimples looked through a hole
+in the floor,--which was not difficult, as the floor was full of
+holes,--and there, on the bottom brick of all, stood the toy captain.
+
+"Come along. Bottom brick. Captain waiting," said her guide; and with
+some little difficulty--for it is not easy to jump from beam to beam
+when one is accustomed to solid floors--she scrambled after him and
+arrived in front of the terrible captain.
+
+"Oho!" said the captain, grasping his sword as tightly as he
+could,--which was very tight, as it happened, because his fingers were
+glued to it,--"who is the real person now, you or I?"
+
+The question was a puzzling one, but Dimples did her best to answer it
+truthfully. "Well," she said, "I suppose you are real, though I didn't
+think so before; and I suppose I am real, too; but it is rather
+confusing, isn't it?"
+
+"Not at all confusing," said the captain, a little rudely it must be
+owned. "It is quite clear that I am real, of course; but as for
+you--why, you are not even painted!"
+
+"No," said Dimples, as politely as she could, "I am not painted, and I
+don't think I want to be painted, thank you. Why, I should never feel
+safe for a moment if I had a face that anybody could wash off with a
+sponge!"
+
+At this the toy captain was so furious that he shook with anger from
+head to foot.
+
+"Do you know," he said, "that I have only to pull out the brick on which
+I am standing, and the whole palace will tumble down on your head?"
+
+"Of course I know," laughed Dimples, who was growing less frightened
+every minute; "but if you do, it will tumble down on your head as well
+as mine."
+
+"That is true," said the toy captain, "but I am a real person and I am
+made of wood, so it will make no difference to me."
+
+Dimples was obliged to own that there was something in what the captain
+said; and as she disliked nothing so much as being beaten in an
+argument, she at once pretended not to be listening.
+
+"Oh, dear, how hungry I am!" she said, yawning.
+
+"If you were real and not made up," said the toy captain, "you would
+never get hungry at all." However, he called out to a soldier, who was
+mounting guard on the top of a pillar just over his head, and ordered
+him to bring the prisoner some food. In a few minutes, Dimples found
+herself in front of a curious meal, served on round cardboard dishes and
+consisting of one red jelly, two raw mutton chops, a bunch of grapes,
+and a slice of salmon.
+
+"But they won't come off the dishes, will they?" asked Dimples, who had
+fed her dolls for years on the very things that were now placed before
+her.
+
+"Of course not," said the toy captain. "They would have been lost long
+ago if they had not been stuck on. What more can you want? If you were a
+real person, as you pretend to be, your appetite would be taken away by
+the mere sight of dishes like those!"
+
+This, in fact, was what had already happened to Dimples, for there was
+nothing very enticing about a jelly from which she remembered sucking
+the paint only a week ago; while as for the other things, even her
+youngest and favourite doll was beginning to grow tired of their
+monotony. So she made no objection when the captain ordered the dishes
+to be removed.
+
+"Now you have satisfied your hunger," continued the captain, "I will
+order you to be taken upstairs to the dungeon."
+
+"Upstairs!" exclaimed Dimples. "What a funny place for a dungeon!"
+
+"Funny? Not in the least!" said the captain, severely. "In a palace of
+this kind you must take the rooms as you find them. You will find the
+dungeon squeezed between the drawing-room and the kitchen, at the very
+top of the left-hand tower. There you will have to stop until the King
+comes."
+
+"Who is the King?" asked Dimples, curiously.
+
+Before the toy captain had time to answer, the band of the regiment
+struck up an inspiriting march. To be sure, there were only two wooden
+drummer boys and two wooden trumpeters, of whom one had lost his trumpet
+and was therefore obliged to blow continually through his stiffened
+fingers; but for all that they made quite a cheerful noise, and in the
+middle of it the King mounted the steps and entered the palace.
+
+"Hurrah! The King! It is the King!" shouted the whole regiment in twenty
+wooden voices.
+
+"The King!" repeated Dimples. "Why, it is the Prince!"
+
+"Don't talk nonsense," said the captain, gruffly. "Do you suppose we
+would allow ourselves to be commanded by a mere Prince? This is a real
+King, I can tell you, though he isn't made of wood, more's the pity!"
+
+And when Dimples saw the dignified way in which the little King walked
+into the palace, she could not help agreeing that he was a very real
+King. Indeed, she found it difficult to believe that he was nothing but
+her playfellow, the Prince Picotee, for never before had she seen him
+look so happy and so triumphant. There was no doubt that the little King
+had found his kingdom; and Dimples, remembering that she was really his
+prisoner, began to wish that she had not teased him so much about his
+toy palace and his toy soldiers. But the King did not even see her; he
+walked straight into the great hall and then stood still and drew a long
+breath of satisfaction.
+
+"It is the most wonderful palace that ever was built," he murmured to
+himself; "it is much, much more wonderful than I thought."
+
+Then his eyes fell upon Dimples, who was trying to hide behind the stiff
+figure of the toy captain, on the bottom brick of all.
+
+"What is that girl doing in my palace?" asked the King, frowning.
+
+"Please your Majesty, it is your Majesty's prisoner," answered the
+captain,--"she is waiting for your Majesty to decide on her punishment."
+
+"What has the prisoner done?" asked the King in as dignified a manner as
+he could assume, considering that he stood on a tottering brick at the
+edge of the abyss in which the captain and his prisoner awaited him.
+
+"Please your Majesty, she was heard to say that your Majesty's army was
+not a real army, and that I, your Majesty,--_I_ was nothing but a toy
+soldier!" said the captain; and he again shook with anger from head to
+foot, which, after all, was the only way he could shake, because he was
+made all in one piece.
+
+"Send the prisoner here," commanded the King. "It is not safe to keep a
+prisoner on the bottom brick--especially when she is a girl."
+
+So Dimples, wishing from the bottom of her heart that the little
+playfellow she had teased had not been suddenly changed into a king,
+clambered up again into the hall.
+
+"Prince Picotee," she said in an anxious undertone, as soon as she was
+near him, "I do think it is a real palace now, I do really!"
+
+"Why, it's only Dimples!" exclaimed the King, and he nearly tumbled off
+the edge of the floor in his surprise. Then he remembered that he was a
+king, and tried to become dignified again, which, of course, was
+exceedingly difficult now that the Prime Minister's daughter was there
+to see. As for Dimples, she had not played with the Prince all her life
+for nothing, and she quite ceased to be frightened of him as soon as she
+came face to face with him.
+
+"If you let that nasty captain punish me, I'll tell them all you are
+only a little boy and not a king at all," she whispered; and her round
+little face twinkled with merriment.
+
+The King wavered. "I always said I would have no girls in my palace," he
+murmured sorrowfully.
+
+"Will you promise?" persisted Dimples.
+
+The King avoided her eyes. It was very hard not to give in and smile
+too, when Dimples looked like that. After all, he reflected, if Dimples
+was a girl and did not understand things properly, she made an excellent
+playfellow; and the most wonderful palace in the world might grow a
+little dull if there were only wooden soldiers to share it with. So the
+King made up his mind, and took the prisoner by one hand and waved his
+other in a royal manner to the captain.
+
+"I will talk it over with the prisoner," he announced, "so do not let us
+be disturbed. And you need not take any more prisoners without
+consulting me," he added hastily, for he really feared that his nurse
+might be the next prisoner, and then, where would be the fun of being a
+king at all?
+
+"Now, let us go and explore your palace," said Dimples, impatiently; and
+the captain was left on the bottom brick to get over his disappointment.
+
+It would be impossible to describe how the two children wandered over
+the fairy palace that the Prince had built; how they climbed from one
+floor to another; how they dropped from arch to pillar; how they wound
+their way in and out of delightful passages, finding fresh secret rooms
+as they went; how from one window they looked down on the vast nursery
+tableland and from another caught a glimpse of the towering
+rocking-horse; how they quite forgot they were King and prisoner, and
+stood at last, hand in hand, on the battlements of the highest tower and
+told each other what fun it was to play in a real fairy palace.
+
+The toy captain, however, had not forgotten anything; and when he saw
+them talking in this familiar manner on the battlements--which he could
+easily do from his position on the bottom brick, so cleverly was this
+wonderful palace built--he felt it was high time to interfere.
+
+"Has your Majesty decided how to punish the prisoner?" asked the toy
+captain, holding himself in his very stiffest manner and raising his
+voice sufficiently to be heard on the battlements.
+
+The King looked at the prisoner, and the prisoner laughed at the King.
+
+"Well," said Dimples, demurely, "_has_ your Majesty made up his mind?"
+
+"Oh, _don't_!" whispered his Majesty, crossly. "You know I can't behave
+like a king if you laugh at me!" Then he folded his arms and looked down
+at the captain. "I have decided not to punish the prisoner at all," he
+said solemnly.
+
+"What!" cried the captain, furiously. "You are not going to punish the
+prisoner at all?"
+
+"No," said his Majesty, growing bolder; "and what is more, I am going to
+have you beheaded for interfering in the King's private affairs!"
+
+Even Dimples felt a little nervous when she saw the look that crept over
+the captain's face.
+
+"Oh, dear," she whispered to the Prince, "that is how he looked
+yesterday when I said he wasn't real. Would it not be wiser to make
+friends with him?"
+
+But her little playfellow was looking as he had looked when he first
+entered his palace. "A king," he said grandly, "makes neither friends
+nor enemies. The captain is only my toy, and I can do as I will with
+him."
+
+The captain's fury knew no bounds when he overheard this. "That is what
+comes of having a king who is not made of wood," he said. "But you have
+forgotten one thing, your Majesty!"
+
+"And what is that?" asked the King, smiling.
+
+"The bottom brick," said the toy captain, as he stooped and pulled it
+out.
+
+Truly, there had never been such a shatter and a clatter and a tumble as
+when the toy captain pulled out the bottom brick of the Prince's palace!
+And in the midst of it all the children felt themselves falling and
+falling and falling. And louder than it all sounded the mocking laughter
+of the toy captain.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Some people would say it was only a dream," observed Prince Picotee,
+the next morning, as they stood over the ruins on the nursery floor.
+
+"It can't have been a dream," answered Dimples, who was always
+practical, "because here is the head of the toy captain."
+
+"And here," added the Prince, bending down, "is his body. So he _was_
+beheaded after all!"
+
+"I wish," sighed Dimples, "that it could all come over again."
+
+"It will some day," the Prince assured her, "when I am King and have
+built another palace like this one."
+
+"But I shall not be there," pouted Dimples, "because you won't have any
+girls in your palace."
+
+Prince Picotee kicked the headless captain about the floor thoughtfully.
+"Well, I'm not quite sure," he said, growing a little red. "Perhaps I'll
+have one girl."
+
+"Will you?" laughed Dimples. "But what if she pulls down your wonderful
+palace?"
+
+"Ah," said Prince Picotee, gravely, "I shall not tell her about the
+bottom brick!"
+
+
+
+
+The Lady Daffodilia
+
+
+No one in the whole kingdom was so idle, or so careless, or so
+thoughtless as the Lady Daffodilia. The only thing she had done ever
+since she was born was to grow and grow and grow, so that, although she
+was only twelve years old, she was quite as tall as the Countess, her
+mother. In fact, she was tall enough to be conceited about it, which, of
+course, was extremely foolish of her, for she had certainly had nothing
+to do with it herself.
+
+"You are a whole year older than I am, but I am a head taller than you,"
+was what she said to Prince Brilliant, when he came to play with her,
+one day. She was perched on the garden wall at the time, so she was able
+to look down on the little Prince even more than usual.
+
+"Hush!" said the Countess, who was drinking tea on the lawn. "That is
+not the way to speak to a Prince."
+
+Prince Brilliant stuck his chin into the air and tried to make the most
+of his height.
+
+"I don't care a bit," he said; "I wouldn't have silly long legs like
+yours for anything. It's much better to know things; and only think of
+all the things I know that you never heard of! You couldn't even say the
+exports and imports of Fairyland without looking in the book first; now,
+could you?"
+
+"Hush!" said his Queen-mother, who was also drinking tea on the lawn.
+"That is not the way to speak to a little lady."
+
+The Lady Daffodilia stooped a little, and smoothed out the creases in
+her black silk stockings, just to show that she had not forgotten how
+much longer her legs were than the Prince's. The Prince pretended not to
+see.
+
+"What you say is very true," then said Daffodilia, who was always fair,
+even when she was most aggravating; "but I am better off than you, all
+the same. I can go and look in the book if I want to know all those
+tiresome stuffy things you think such a lot about; but all the books in
+the world won't make you so tall as I am!"
+
+The Prince was much annoyed, for there was no doubt that the Lady
+Daffodilia had the best of the argument. He aimed a most unprincely kick
+at a harmless geranium plant, that, like the Lady Daffodilia, had never
+done anything in its life but grow; and he turned very red in the face.
+
+"You're only a girl," he said; "and girls think too much of themselves.
+That's what my Professor says!"
+
+"If _you_ were a girl," laughed the Lady Daffodilia, "it would not
+matter about your being such a little bit of a thing! Is it not very
+unpleasant to be so short, when you are a boy?"
+
+The Prince turned and walked quickly towards the garden gate. It was
+true that he was a prince, and could not therefore be rude to the Lady
+Daffodilia; but he was a boy, too, and if he had stopped another minute
+he was quite certain he would have lifted her down from the wall and
+given her a good shaking.
+
+"Where are you going?" she cried after him, and laughed more than ever
+when she saw how cross she had made him.
+
+"Where are you going?" echoed the Queen and the Countess.
+
+Prince Brilliant turned when he reached the gate, and faced them all
+with a resolute look on his small, round face.
+
+"I am going to find out the way to grow tall," he said. "I shall not
+come back until I am as tall as the Lady Daffodilia."
+
+Then he went through the gate and slammed it behind him, and marched
+away down the hot, dusty road. The Queen and the Countess only smiled,
+for they did not suppose he had gone for good; but the Lady Daffodilia
+slipped down from the wall and on to the grass lawn, and began to weep.
+
+"I have sent away my favourite Prince," she sobbed, "and I shall never
+have him to play with again."
+
+"Do not cry, little daughter," said the Countess, soothingly; "your
+Prince will come back soon."
+
+"You do not know him so well as I do," said Daffodilia. "He always means
+what he says; and since it is quite certain that nothing can ever make
+him as tall as I am, it is quite certain that he will never come back
+any more."
+
+It seemed as though her words were likely to come true, for the Prince
+had not returned by bedtime; and, although the King's messengers rode
+out that very night and hunted the whole country up and down for days
+and weeks and years, not a trace was ever found of the little Prince who
+had gone to learn the way to grow tall. So the kingdom was left without
+an heir to the throne, and the Lady Daffodilia was left without a
+playfellow. It was not her way, however, to sit down and cry about it,
+besides which she had found something really important to do at last.
+
+"If the Prince has gone away to grow as tall as I am," she said, "_I_
+will stay at home and grow as clever as he is!"
+
+So she shut herself up in the Count's library with a pile of dusty
+books, and tried her very best to learn the exports and imports of
+Fairyland. But as fast as she learned one she forgot the other; and she
+ended by completely jumbling them up, which was really a serious matter,
+for it is quite evident that the things we give to Fairyland are not at
+all the same things as Fairyland gives to us. And then, long before the
+Lady Daffodilia had grown as clever as the Prince, the people came and
+clapped her into prison, "for," they said, "it is your fault that the
+heir to the throne is lost." It is true that they did not put her into a
+very unpleasant prison, for it was a nice, comfortable old castle, in
+the middle of a green plain; but there was no one to play with and no
+one to tease, so it was most decidedly a prison. Added to this, the Lady
+Daffodilia seemed to have stopped growing at last, for she never grew
+another inch after the Prince went away; and as this robbed her of her
+only occupation, she began for the first time in her life to long for
+something to do. And she grew so tired of looking at the same green
+plain day after day, that she determined to make it into a garden for a
+change; and the flowers and the shrubs were so proud of being planted by
+such dainty, white hands that they tried their very hardest to grow up
+nicely and be a credit to her; and the result was that the little lady
+in the castle soon became known as the most wonderful gardener in the
+kingdom.
+
+Now, when Prince Brilliant ran away from the Lady Daffodilia he found
+the road so hot and so dusty that he was obliged to keep near the hedge
+at the side; and he had not run very far before he pushed his head
+through a very elegant spider's web. The spider was exceedingly cross,
+and grumbled; but the daddy-longlegs that tumbled out of her web was
+very much pleased with himself.
+
+"Well, my little friend," he said to the Prince, "where are you running
+so fast, this fine morning?"
+
+Now, one of the things the Prince had learned from his Professor was the
+way to speak to a daddy-longlegs, so before another five minutes had
+passed he had told him the whole of his trouble. "Do _you_ know the way
+to make your legs grow long?" asked the Prince at the end of his story.
+
+"Well," said the daddy-longlegs, "that is certainly one of the things I
+am generally supposed to know; but if I show you the way, do you think
+you will have patience to do everything I tell you? It may take a very
+long time."
+
+"I can wait years and years and years and years," said the Prince, in
+his determined way; and the daddy-longlegs had the sense to see that he
+meant what he said.
+
+"Right you are," he said. "Then jump straight into that hedge; and the
+more spiders' webs you break on the way, the better--nasty, choky,
+stuffy things!"
+
+"What shall I do when I get there?" asked the Prince.
+
+"Oh, you haven't got to do anything," said the daddy-longlegs, with a
+chuckle. "Just wait there until I come to you."
+
+"All right; but you won't be long, will you?" said the Prince; and he
+tucked his crown under his arm and shut his eyes tight and jumped
+straight into the thorny, prickly hedge.
+
+When he opened his eyes, he found himself in a strange new country, that
+was all made of rose-coloured dreams, and filled with rose-coloured air,
+and lighted with rose-coloured sunbeams. There were no people or trees
+or mountains or rivers to be seen; but before the little Prince had time
+to notice this, his mind was filled with rose-coloured thoughts, and so
+he forgot the Lady Daffodilia and his own crossness and everything that
+had made him unhappy when he was in the real world.
+
+"Hullo! Where am I?" he cried.
+
+"You are in the world of dreams, to be sure," said a voice in his ear.
+"Where else should you be at your time of life?"
+
+"But who lives here?" asked Prince Brilliant.
+
+A great many voices answered him. "_We_ live here, of course," they
+said. "We are really nice dreams, we are; and when children are the
+right sort, like yourself, they come here to stay with us until they are
+grown up."
+
+"May I play with you, then?" asked the Prince. In the real world he had
+been too fond of books to play much, but here he felt as though he must
+do nothing but play all day long.
+
+"Of course you may," answered the dream voices; "that is what you are
+here for."
+
+Prince Brilliant was soon the happiest boy possible. Some people might
+think it dull to have playfellows who could not be seen, but the Prince
+thought nothing could be more delightful than to live in the midst of
+dreams for the rest of his life. It is true that he was fast forgetting
+everything that his Professor had taught him; but this was hardly
+surprising, for there is no room in a very small head for serious
+thoughts as well as rose-coloured ones.
+
+It is doubtful whether the Prince would ever have wanted to go back to
+the real world again, if he had not met the daddy-longlegs one day, as
+he was strolling along with his favourite dream.
+
+"Hullo!" said the daddy-longlegs, chuckling. "I see it is time for you
+to go back into the real world."
+
+"What, already?" exclaimed the Prince. "Why, you said I should have to
+wait years and years and years and----"
+
+"You have been here exactly seven years," interrupted the
+daddy-longlegs; "and it is time for you to meet the waking-up dream."
+
+The Prince suddenly began to remember things. "When shall I be as tall
+as the Lady Daffodilia?" he cried. But the daddy-longlegs had no time to
+do anything but chuckle before the waking-up dream came and seized hold
+of the Prince, and he found himself falling, falling, falling--down,
+down, down--until he dropped with a thud on a soft grass lawn, and
+found himself in the middle of the most beautiful garden in the world. A
+little way off stood an old grey castle; and as he lay looking at it the
+gate swung open, and out stepped a dainty, winsome little lady.
+
+The Prince sprang to his feet with a shout and held out his arms; and
+the Lady Daffodilia ran straight into them without stopping so much as
+to think.
+
+"How _did_ you learn to grow so tall?" she asked, looking up at him.
+
+"Well," said the Prince, truthfully, "I just went into the world of
+dreams and waited till I was grown up. You see, I was a boy and not a
+girl, all the time; so I was not in such a hurry as you to get my
+growing done early."
+
+"I tried to grow as clever as you," sighed Daffodilia, "but nothing
+would stop in my head. I couldn't even say the exports and imports of
+Fairyland without looking in the book first!"
+
+"Never mind," laughed the Prince; "I don't believe there are any
+imports, for I am sure _we_ have nothing good enough to send there. And
+as for the exports, there is only one thing that Fairyland has sent into
+this country that is worth remembering."
+
+"And what is that?" she asked anxiously.
+
+"It is something that is not very tall and not very serious and not very
+wise," answered the Prince; "but it is sweet and merry and charming, and
+it is called the Lady Daffodilia!"
+
+
+
+
+The Kite That Went to the Moon
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+Jerry had made the biggest kite in the village; and Chubby, the
+woodcutter's daughter, had painted a big round moon on it and several
+stars as well. That alone was enough to show that it was by no means an
+ordinary kite; so it was no wonder that Jerry felt very proud of himself
+when he ran on to the village green to fly it.
+
+"Stand back, all of you!" he said, as the girls and boys came crowding
+round him. "Now, you shall see my kite fly to the moon!"
+
+No doubt, Jerry was inclined to make quite enough fuss about his kite;
+but it is not every day that one has a chance of flying the biggest kite
+in the village, especially when one is only seven years old. He felt
+very sad, however, when he found that his kite had no intention of
+flying to the moon. Every time he threw it into the air, back it fell
+again on the grass; and although he tried again and again, and used
+yards and yards of the very best string that twopence-halfpenny could
+buy, any one could see that something was decidedly wrong with the
+biggest kite in the village.
+
+Jerry turned red, and blinked his eyes, and reminded himself desperately
+that he was seven years old. It was certainly hard to have spent six
+half-holidays in making a kite that would not fly in the end.
+
+"Stupid thing!" he muttered crossly. "If I had the chance, just wouldn't
+I fly to the moon! Kites don't know when they are well off!"
+
+But when all the boys and girls burst out laughing, and pointed their
+fingers at him and began to tease, it was impossible to keep back his
+tears any longer. After all, one cannot go on remembering for ever that
+one is seven years old. The children, however, only laughed the more,
+when the little maker of the kite suddenly flung himself down on the
+ground and began to cry.
+
+"What is the use of a kite that won't fly?" they jeered. "Take it home,
+Jerry, and make it the same size as other people's kites! And mind you
+let us know what the moon is like, when your kite gets there!"
+
+Jerry started to his feet again and shook his fist at them. "Some day,"
+he shouted, "I shall be able to laugh at you instead."
+
+"When will that be, Jerry?" cried all the boys and girls.
+
+"When my kite has flown to the moon," answered Jerry, in a determined
+tone; and he picked up his kite there and then, and marched off to the
+school to find Chubby, the woodcutter's daughter.
+
+"Hullo, Chubby!" he said, popping his head in at the schoolroom window.
+"Haven't you done that sum yet?"
+
+Chubby looked up with a doleful face. After painting a moon and several
+stars on the biggest kite in the village, it was not pleasant to be kept
+in school just because seven would not go into sixty-three.
+
+"I shall never finish it, Jerry, never!" she said with a sigh.
+
+"Chubby," said Jerry, solemnly, "you've been crying."
+
+Chubby rubbed her eyes hastily with her two fists. "I don't think so,"
+she replied in a muffled tone; "it was just three tears that trickled
+down my nose and made a smudge on the slate; but that isn't crying. You
+know it isn't, Jerry!"
+
+Jerry rubbed his own eyes a little guiltily. "My kite wouldn't fly," he
+remarked, and tried to look as though he did not care a bit.
+
+"What!" cried Chubby. "Wouldn't your kite fly? Then I never need have
+cried at all."
+
+Jerry clambered on the window ledge and sat there with his legs swinging
+to and fro. He wished Chubby would not talk so much about crying. "All
+the string got mixed up," he explained with dignity; "I expect that was
+it."
+
+"I don't," said Chubby, decidedly; "it was because the tail was too
+short. I told you so, all the time."
+
+No doubt there was something in what she said, but reasons are not much
+good when you are seven years old and your kite won't fly, and Jerry was
+not in a mood to be trifled with.
+
+"If you know so much about it," he retorted, "you'd better come and fly
+it yourself."
+
+"I only wish I could," sighed poor little Chubby. "If you'll tell me how
+many times seven goes into--"
+
+"Oh, don't," interrupted Jerry, crossly. "How can I do sums when my kite
+won't fly?"
+
+Then he flung himself down from the window ledge, and started off to
+find some one who would tell him why his kite would not fly. Half-way
+down the village street, he met a fine black raven.
+
+"Good day to you," said Jerry, who knew that ravens could explain most
+things if they chose. "Can you tell me why my kite won't fly?"
+
+"Caw, caw!" croaked the raven. "Nine times, Jerry, nine times! Caw,
+caw!"
+
+"I wonder what he means," thought Jerry, and trudged on a little
+farther. Presently he met a sheep. Now, sheep do not know much as a
+rule, but they are always extremely anxious to tell what they do know.
+So Jerry asked her at once why his kite would not fly.
+
+"Baa, baa!" said the sheep. "Nine times, Jerry, nine times! Baa, baa!"
+
+"Everybody is going mad this afternoon," thought Jerry; and he went on a
+little farther. Just at the end of the village, a cockchafer came
+buzzing round his head.
+
+"Buz-z-z!" hummed the cockchafer. "Nine times, Jerry, nine times!
+Buz-z-z!"
+
+"Oh, go away, do!" cried Jerry, impatiently. "What do you all mean by
+nine times?"
+
+The cockchafer did not go away an inch, but buzzed closer to Jerry's
+head than before. "Buz-z-z," he hummed; "nine times, Jerry, nine times,
+nine times, nine times, nine times--"
+
+All at once, the cockchafer's meaning entered Jerry's head, which was
+hardly to be wondered at, considering how close his head was at that
+moment to the cockchafer.
+
+"Of course it's nine times!" he cried. "Why didn't I think of that
+before?" Then he turned round and dragged his kite all the way back to
+the school, where Chubby still sat sighing over her sum.
+
+"It goes nine times exactly, Chubby," he told her through the window;
+"so now you can come and help me to carry this great big kite."
+
+"Where are we going, Jerry?" asked Chubby, when she had finished her sum
+and joined him.
+
+"We are going out into the world, to discover the reason why my kite
+won't fly," answered Jerry; and between them they picked up the biggest
+kite in the village and carried it out into the world.
+
+"How are we going to discover why your kite won't fly?" asked Chubby,
+when they had walked a good way. She had had no tea, to tell the truth,
+and was beginning to feel remarkably hungry.
+
+"We will ask everybody we meet," said Jerry, who had had his tea and was
+therefore not at all hungry. "There is sure to be some one in the world
+who can tell us, and we will not rest until we find him."
+
+"We haven't met anybody yet," remarked Chubby, rather dolefully. "How
+long do you think we shall have to go on walking before we find the
+right person?"
+
+"Perhaps for years and years," answered Jerry, cheerfully. "But if we
+are quick, we may meet him sooner than that."
+
+He quickened his steps as he spoke, and Chubby had to run a little to
+keep up with him. It was beginning to grow dark now, and the country
+seemed more and more desolate.
+
+"The world is not so full of people as I expected to find it," said
+Jerry, in a disappointed tone. "I do hope we shall soon meet some one
+who will know why my kite won't fly."
+
+Just then, he thought he heard something from behind that sounded like a
+sob. Sure enough, there was Chubby, wiping her eyes with the corner of
+her pinafore.
+
+"I'm so hungry," she sobbed. "I want my tea. Can't we go home, Jerry,
+and put off seeing the world until to-morrow?"
+
+Jerry looked at her and sighed. If it had been any one but Chubby, he
+would most certainly have grumbled at her. As it was, he only propped
+up the kite against the hedge and made her sit down beside it.
+
+"I am afraid I don't know the way home," he said; "but if you will wait
+here, I will go and get you something to eat."
+
+He was not at all sure where he was going to find it, but he hastened
+along the road as fast as he could and hoped he would soon come to a
+house. Long before he came to a house, however, he came to a man, a
+little old man, who was carrying a large sack on his shoulder. Directly
+he saw Jerry, he swung the sack on to the ground and began untying the
+mouth of it.
+
+"Well, my little fellow," he said in a friendly tone, "what do you want
+out of my bag?"
+
+"That depends on what you have got in your bag," answered Jerry,
+promptly.
+
+"I have everything in the world in my bag," replied the little old man,
+"for everything is there that everybody wants. I have laughter and tears
+and happiness and sadness; I can give you riches or poverty, sense or
+nonsense; here is a way to discover the things that you don't know, and
+a way to forget the things that you do know. Will you have a toy that
+changes whenever you wish, or a book that tells you stories whenever you
+listen to it, or a pair of shoes in which you can dance from boyhood
+into youth? Choose whatever you like and it shall be yours; but
+remember, I can only give you one thing out of my bag, so think well
+before you make up your mind."
+
+Jerry did not stop to think at all. "Have you something to eat in your
+bag, something that will please a hungry little girl who has had no
+tea?" he asked.
+
+The little old man smiled and pulled out a small cake about the size of
+Jerry's fist. It did not look as though it would satisfy any one who was
+as hungry as Chubby; but as the old man disappeared, sack and all, the
+moment he had given Jerry the cake, it was not much good complaining
+about it. So back trotted Jerry to the place where he had left Chubby;
+and greatly to his relief her face beamed with joy directly she had
+eaten one mouthful.
+
+"What a beautiful cake!" she cried; "it tastes like strawberry jam and
+toffee and ices, and all the things I like best. And see! as fast as I
+eat it, it comes again, so that I shall never be able to finish it. Take
+some, Jerry."
+
+"Why," said Jerry, as soon as he had taken a bite, "it tastes like
+currant buns and ginger-beer and all the things _I_ like best. It is
+certain that we shall never starve as long as we have a fairy cake like
+this." Then he told her how he had come by it.
+
+"Perhaps," remarked Chubby, "the little old man could have told you why
+your kite wouldn't fly."
+
+"Perhaps he could," said Jerry, carelessly, "but I didn't think to ask
+him. We'll come along and ask the next person instead."
+
+When, however, they looked round for the kite, it was nowhere to be
+seen. The moon came out obligingly from behind a cloud and helped them
+as much as it could; but although they searched for a long time, not a
+trace could they find of the biggest kite in the village.
+
+"Oh dear, oh dear!" sighed Chubby. "Perhaps I went to sleep while you
+were away, and somebody came along and took it. But I did think I
+stopped awake, Jerry; I did indeed!"
+
+"And so you did, to be sure!" cried a voice from the hedge; "but you
+would have to be very wide awake to keep _that_ kite from giving you the
+slip, as soon as the moon came up!"
+
+Of course, no one but a wymp would have appeared like that, just in time
+to say the right thing; so the children were not at all surprised when a
+particularly wympish wymp came tumbling out of the hedge and perched
+himself on a thistle and wimpled at them.
+
+"Do you mean to say you know where the kite has gone?" asked both the
+children, breathlessly.
+
+"Look up there and see," answered the wymp, pointing to the sky.
+
+The sky was covered with stars, hundreds and thousands of them, all
+twinkling round the moon just as Chubby had painted them on the kite.
+Only, she could not help thinking that her stars had more shape and were
+decidedly more like stars than the real stars were; but this, she
+supposed, might be because the real stars were such a long way off. One
+of them was different from all the others; it had a long bright tail
+that glittered like a cracker at Christmas time, and it was scurrying
+across the sky at such a pace that the rest of the stars had to get out
+of its way as best they could. Most of the people who looked out of
+their windows that night thought they saw a comet; but Jerry and Chubby
+knew better.
+
+"Oh," they cried, clapping their hands with excitement. "There is our
+kite, and it _is_ flying to the moon after all!"
+
+"There's no doubt about that," said the wymp, who was still wimpling at
+them from the top of the thistle.
+
+"But why did it not fly to the moon this afternoon, when all the other
+boys were looking on?" asked Jerry, regretfully.
+
+"Because there wasn't a moon to fly to, of course!" answered the wymp.
+"You shouldn't expect too much, even from the biggest kite in the
+village. Directly there _was_ a moon, you see, away it flew."
+
+"Then, if I had painted the sun on it, instead of the moon, it would
+have flown away this afternoon!" exclaimed Chubby.
+
+"Exactly so," said the wymp. "Now, what ever induced you to paint a
+thing like the moon on anybody's kite, eh?"
+
+"Well, you see, the moon is so nice and easy," explained Chubby. "All
+you have to do is to draw a circle round the biggest soup plate you can
+find; and then you take away the soup plate, and you paint in the eyes
+and the nose and the mouth, and there you are! You can't do much more
+than that with three paints and a brush that's got hardly any hairs, can
+you?"
+
+"Yes, you can," retorted the wymp, "you can paint the sun, and that's
+ever so much better than painting the moon--nasty, silly, chilly thing!"
+
+"Oh, but you can't paint the sun when you've only got three paints,"
+objected Chubby. "It takes ever so many more paints than that to make it
+shine properly; and even then, it doesn't always."
+
+"Shine!" repeated the wymp. "Who said anything about shining? When I say
+the sun, I mean the other side of the sun, of course. _That_ doesn't
+shine,--knows better, indeed!"
+
+He seemed so hurt about it that Chubby hastened to pacify him. "I'm very
+sorry," she said. "Of course, I should like to paint your side of the
+sun very much, but it is a little difficult when I haven't ever been
+there, isn't it?"
+
+"Perhaps it is," admitted the wymp; "but if that is all, I'll take you
+there this very minute. Will you come?"
+
+Chubby looked round; and there was Jerry still gazing up at the star
+with the long tail, that was causing so much commotion among the
+countries of the sky. Just then, it reached the moon and went straight
+into it with a big splash; and Jerry heaved a deep sigh.
+
+That decided Chubby. "If you please," she said, turning to the wymp in a
+great hurry, "I think we would rather go to the moon."
+
+The wymp instantly flew into the most violent passion. "What!" he
+exclaimed, shaking all over with indignation. "You would sooner go to
+the moon than the back of the sun? Well, I _am_ sorry for you."
+
+Chubby was just going to be frightened, when Jerry came and put his arm
+round her protectingly. "You see," he explained to the wymp, "it's not
+the moon we want, it's the kite. And the kite has gone to the moon,
+unfortunately. I suppose I am glad it has gone," he added rather
+doubtfully, "but I do wish it had waited to take me with it."
+
+"Oh, well," said the wymp, calming down a little, "if you are quite sure
+you don't _want_ to go to the moon, I shall have the greatest pleasure
+in taking you there. I'll call a comet at once." He put his fingers to
+his mouth and blew a whistle that was long enough to reach the countries
+of the sky. "Now I come to think of it," he continued thoughtfully, "it
+is a very good thing you did not want to go to Wympland, because we
+should have been obliged to wait until the morning."
+
+"Why couldn't we go to-night?" asked Jerry.
+
+"Because there isn't a Wympland to go to," answered the wymp, promptly.
+"When the sun goes down it takes the back of itself with itself, and
+there isn't a Wympland again till next morning. I shouldn't be here
+now, if I hadn't missed the last sunbeam this evening. That is the worst
+of living in a place that disappears every night."
+
+"Oh, but it doesn't disappear really," said Chubby, who wanted to show
+that she knew a little geography; "the sun is shining somewhere else at
+this very moment, only we can't see it."
+
+"Rubbish!" said the wymp, scornfully. "Don't you believe everything
+you're told about the sun! Who said it didn't disappear, eh? Has any one
+ever gone after it to see?"
+
+"N-no," said Chubby, doubtfully, "but--"
+
+"That proves it doesn't go on shining, then," said the wymp,
+triumphantly. "There's plenty of inquisitive people who'd have gone
+after the sun long ago, if it hadn't the sense to disappear every night.
+It must have some peace, you know, if it's got to come up smiling again
+the next morning."
+
+"Do the wymps disappear every night, too?" asked Jerry.
+
+"Of course they do," answered the wymp. "Don't you?"
+
+"I didn't know we did," said Jerry, a little bewildered. "I thought we
+only went to sleep."
+
+"Ah, you do that first," said the wymp. "Then you disappear."
+
+"No, we don't," said Chubby, positively. "We shouldn't have dreams if we
+disappeared."
+
+"You certainly wouldn't have any dreams unless you did disappear,"
+chuckled the wymp.
+
+"Then what about to-night?" demanded Jerry. "Do you mean to say we have
+disappeared now?"
+
+The wymp sighed. "Some people never will know when they're not there,"
+he complained. "But here is our comet; jump in, or else we shall be
+late."
+
+Down swooped the great shining comet, and there it lay across the road,
+waiting for them to mount. The children climbed on to its broad
+glittering tail and held tightly to each other, while the wymp mounted
+in front of them and stood like the man at the wheel, with his hand on
+the comet's head; then up they flew at a terrific pace, right through
+the wonderful blue darkness that stretched all round them. Far above was
+the great land of light that lay round the moon; but the country of the
+stars came in between, and the stars were still so far off that they had
+not even begun to look like real stars.
+
+"Afraid of the dark?" asked the wymp over his shoulder.
+
+"Oh, no," said Chubby. "I am only afraid of the dark you get at home
+when the candle is put out. This is a nice, friendly kind of darkness,
+and candles wouldn't make any difference to it."
+
+"I don't know so much about that," said the wymp; "if you had the
+steering to do, you wouldn't mind a candle or two to help you."
+
+"Do you steer by the points of the compass?" asked Jerry, eagerly. Some
+one had given him a compass on his last birthday, and he had steered by
+it ever since. Indeed, he had arrived late at school several times,
+through steering his way by the points of the compass.
+
+"Certainly not," said the wymp; "when you are sailing on a comet, you
+steer by the points of the comet, of course." Just then, he gave a sharp
+turn to the points of the comet, and it sailed right out of the blue
+darkness and took them into the dim mysterious greyness of the country
+of the stars.
+
+"They _are_ like real stars," murmured Chubby, for she had begun to have
+serious doubts whether the stars she had painted on the kite were not
+wrong after all. It was very comforting to find that the stars that were
+whizzing past them in hundreds and thousands looked just like the stars
+she had been accustomed to see on Christmas trees, and had such sharp
+points that it would not have been at all pleasant to run against one of
+them by mistake. Indeed, the wymp had as much as he could do to steer
+through the country of the stars without coming into collision with
+them, although the comet did not make half so much commotion in the sky
+as Jerry's kite had done. But then, Jerry's kite had never been trained
+to be a comet, and that made all the difference.
+
+It grew lighter and lighter as they came nearer the moon, and even the
+stars began to look pale in the white light that was shining so close to
+the edge of their country. The stars were growing fewer, too, for stars
+naturally prefer to shine in a place where they can be seen, and just
+here, at the edge of their country, they could hardly be seen at all.
+Then the wymp gave another turn to the points of the comet, and it
+glided gently from the country of the stars into the pale white country
+of the moon.
+
+"It's like being inside a great flame that isn't hot," whispered Chubby.
+
+Even the wymp had to admit that the country of the moon had something in
+its favour. "For those who like light," he allowed, "the moon is all
+very well. For my part, I prefer Wympland, where there isn't any light
+at all. You can't say that of any other country on either side of the
+sun!"
+
+"I don't want to say it," objected Chubby; "I am very glad there _is_
+some light in my country."
+
+"But there isn't," retorted the wymp. "There's only other people's light
+in your country! Where would you be, if you didn't borrow bits of light
+from the countries of the sky, eh?"
+
+Chubby thought it would be wiser to change the conversation. "If you
+please," she said politely, "can you tell me when we shall get to the
+moon?"
+
+"Why," laughed the wymp, "we are in the moon now!"
+
+Chubby looked round her in bewilderment. "But where are the eyes and the
+nose and the mouth?" she asked.
+
+The wymp shook his head. "I am afraid," he said gravely, "that you must
+have found them in the soup plate. Perhaps Jerry knows where they are."
+
+But Jerry was looking everywhere for something that was far more
+important. Some people might want to come all this way to look for the
+man in the moon, but for his part he intended to find the biggest kite
+in the village, the kite that had taken him six half-holidays to make.
+"Do you think we shall find it soon?" he asked impatiently.
+
+Nobody answered him, for just then the comet came to such a sudden
+standstill that all three of them were nearly jerked off into the air.
+It was not the comet's fault, however, for right in its way was Jerry's
+kite; and it was lucky for everybody, that night, that there was not an
+extremely bad accident in the countries of the sky.
+
+"Why don't you look where you are going?" asked the kite, in just the
+flippant fly away sort of tone one would expect from a kite.
+
+Jerry was so astonished at being addressed in this impudent manner by a
+thing he had made with his own hands, that he did not know what to
+reply. The comet, however, was a comet of a few words; and all it did
+was to put its head down and rush straight at Jerry's kite. There is no
+doubt that in another minute there would have been a terrific battle in
+the middle of the moon, if a strange, clear voice from beyond had not
+spoken just in time to stop it.
+
+"Who is daring to make all this commotion in my country?" said the
+voice.
+
+"Hullo!" muttered the wymp, suddenly; "I was expecting that. Good-bye,
+children; I'm off!" And pointing his hands downward, he took a dive from
+the head of the comet and disappeared in the direction of the country of
+the stars.
+
+At the same instant, out from the pale white distance of the country of
+the moon glided a tall figure, as white and delicate and shimmering as
+the light that surrounded it.
+
+"Is it--can it be the man in the moon?" whispered Chubby to the boy
+beside her.
+
+Then the figure came closer, and they saw that it was a wonderful,
+mysterious-looking, white witch-woman.
+
+"I am the Lady of the Moon," she said, in the same clear, cold voice.
+"Snow and stillness and space are wherever I go; when I smile, I make
+the whole world beautiful, but my smile takes the colour away from the
+flowers and the ripple away from the water and the warmth away from the
+sunshine."
+
+She looked round, and her eye lighted on Jerry's kite. "What is that
+creature doing in my country?" she demanded.
+
+All the impudence seemed to have gone out of the biggest kite in the
+village, for it lay there trembling at the feet of the Lady of the
+Moon, and had not so much as a word to say for itself. Jerry, however,
+summoned up courage to answer for it. After all, it was through him that
+the kite was there, and he naturally felt bound to defend it.
+
+"If you please," he said, "it is my kite. I made it, all by myself,--it
+took six half-holidays; and Chubby painted the moon and the stars on
+it."
+
+"I am afraid," said Chubby, hurriedly, "that the moon is not very much
+like the moon, but it was the best I could do with three paints and a
+brush that hadn't any hairs. The stars are right," she added anxiously.
+
+The Lady of the Moon smiled contemptuously. "Stars, indeed!" she
+observed. "What does it matter how the stars are painted? The moon is
+far more important, and you have made a regular muddle of that! And who
+told you children that you might come into my country, I should like to
+know?"
+
+"The wymp brought us," explained Jerry. "He was here a minute ago, but
+he has just left."
+
+"No doubt he has," said the Lady of the Moon, with a little laugh that
+made them shiver. "Wymps know better than to come in my way. I can turn
+their laughter into hoar-frost, and they don't like that. As for you,
+unless you want to be frozen tight to the middle of the moon for the
+rest of your lives, you had better make haste home again."
+
+Chubby was only too anxious to be off, for she had no wish to spend the
+rest of her life with some one who made people shiver whenever she
+laughed. Jerry, however, did not mean to have his journey to the moon
+for nothing.
+
+"Please, may I take my kite back with me?" he asked boldly. "I want to
+show the other boys and girls that it did fly to the moon after all."
+
+"That's all very well," objected the kite, who had stopped trembling and
+become impudent again; "but I don't want to go back among a lot of girls
+and boys who do not know how to appreciate me. When a fellow has once
+been a comet, you cannot expect him to end his days as a common kite."
+
+"Oh, well," said the Lady of the Moon, gathering her mantle closely
+round her and stepping away from them, "settle that among yourselves,
+only please go out of my country first. For my part, I must go and put
+the finishing touches to that hoar-frost of mine before dawn."
+
+She had hardly finished speaking when a faint gleam of pink pierced the
+white light around her and touched the edge of her mantle. She gave a
+shrill cry instantly, and waved her arms about her in the greatest
+excitement.
+
+"Go, go, go! Dawn is coming, and you will be swallowed up in the setting
+of the moon," she screamed at them. "Go, go, go!"
+
+Chubby began to feel tearful, for it is not pleasant to be told that one
+is going to be swallowed up in anything. But Jerry had a sudden
+inspiration.
+
+"Jump, Chubby, jump!" he shouted, seizing her by the arm and springing
+away from the comet. Chubby must have done as she was told, for the next
+minute she found herself sitting beside him, on the top of the biggest
+kite in the village. As for the comet, it was only too anxious to get
+back to the place where it could shine and be seen; so it took a great
+dive down into the country of the stars, just as the wymp had done, and
+they never saw it again.
+
+"Now," said Jerry sternly to his kite, "you've just got to take us home
+straightway without any more nonsense! If you want to stay and be
+swallowed up, we don't. You can come back again and be a comet for the
+rest of your days, for all I care; but I'm determined that you shall
+show the village first that you know how to fly. Now, down you go!"
+
+Evidently, the kite felt that there was some sense in Jerry's words, for
+it made no further objections, but sailed swiftly out of the country of
+the moon just in time to escape being swallowed up. The downward journey
+was much simpler than the one of the night before, for the sun was
+rising as fast as it could, and the stars were disappearing so rapidly
+that there were hardly any of them left to get in the way. This was a
+very good thing, for, as I said before, Jerry's kite had not been
+trained to be a comet, and it takes a good deal of steering to get
+through the countries of the sky without an accident on the way.
+
+Chubby was hungry enough to remember her fairy cake; and as it was
+nearly breakfast time, of course it tasted of milk and porridge and eggs
+and bacon. But Jerry refused to touch a mouthful. He was busy thinking
+of what the other boys and girls would say, when they saw him come
+sailing home on his kite.
+
+The sun was shining brightly, and the birds were singing, and the
+children were laughing on their way to school, when Jerry and Chubby at
+last reached home on the biggest kite in the village.
+
+"Oh, oh!" cried all the boys and girls, rushing up to them in great
+excitement. "Here's Jerry and Chubby been sailing about on the biggest
+kite in the village! Where have you been, Jerry?"
+
+Jerry smiled in a superior manner, and waved them all back with his
+hand.
+
+"What a fuss you do make, to be sure!" he observed. "Didn't I tell you
+my kite was going to the moon?"
+
+Then Jerry went home to breakfast; but Jerry's kite sailed back to the
+countries of the sky, and it has been a comet ever since.
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+
+Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
+
+Minor typographical errors have been corrected.
+
+Both "hillside" and "hill-side" were used in this text. This has been
+retained.
+
+Both "some one" and "someone" were used in this text. This has been
+retained.
+
+There was one occurrence of "WillowHerb" in the text. This was changed
+to "Willow-Herb", as it appeared as such multiple times.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Other Side of the Sun, by Evelyn Sharp
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 40573 ***