{"collection":"myth-cosmogony","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_30400/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_30400","id":"gutenberg_30400","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/30400","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Children & Young Adult Reading","Category: Mythology, Legends & Folklore","Category: Short Stories","Fairies -- Fiction","Fairy tales","Kings and rulers -- Fiction","Princesses -- Fiction"],"text":"Produced by Al Haines\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: Cover art]\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAll the Way to Fairyland\n\nFairy Stories\n\n\nBY\n\nEVELYN SHARP\n\nAUTHOR OF \"WYMPS\"\n\n\n\n\nWITH EIGHT COLOURED ILLUSTRATIONS\n\nAND A COVER BY MRS. PERCY DEARMER\n\n\n\n\nJOHN LANE\n\nTHE BODLEY HEAD\n\nLONDON AND NEW YORK\n\n1898\n\n\n\n\nCOPYRIGHT, 1897, BY\n\nJOHN LANE.\n\n\nFIRST EDITION\n\n\nUniversity Press:\n\nJOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.\n\n\n\n\n_By the Same author:_\n\nWYMPS: FAIRY TALES.  With eight coloured illustrations by Mrs. Percy\nDearmer.\n\nTHE MAKING OF A SCHOOLGIRL.\n\nAT THE RELTON ARMS.\n\nTHE MAKING OF A PRIG.\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: A PRINCESS FLOATING ABOUT ON A SOFT WHITE CLOUD]\n\n\nTHESE STORIES\n\nARE FOR\n\nGEOFFREY AND CHRISTOPHER\n\nTRISTAN AND ISEULT\n\nMARGARET AND BOY\n\nAND\n\nEVERARD\n\nAND ALL THE OTHER CHILDREN\n\nWHO WOULD LIKE TO GO\n\nALL THE WAY TO FAIRYLAND\n\n\n\n\nContents\n\n\nCHAPTER\n\n    I.  THE COUNTRY CALLED NONAMIA\n   II.  WHY THE WYMPS CRIED\n  III.  THE STORY OF HONEY AND SUNNY\n   IV.  THE LITTLE PRINCESS AND THE POET\n    V.  THE WONDERFUL TOYMAKER\n   VI.  THE PROFESSOR OF PRACTICAL JOKES\n  VII.  THE DOLL THAT CAME STRAIGHT FROM FAIRYLAND\n VIII.  THOSE WYMPS AGAIN!\n\n\n\n\nList of Illustrations\n\nBY MRS. PERCY DEARMER\n\n\n    I.  A PRINCESS FLOATING ABOUT ON A SOFT WHITE CLOUD . _Frontispiece_\n\n   II.  THE WYMPS SAY THAT QUEER BEGAN IT\n\n  III.  SUNNY WAS SO ASTONISHED THAT SHE STOPPED CRYING AT ONCE\n\n   IV.  \"COME WITH ME, POET,\" SAID THE LITTLE PRINCESS\n\n    V.  THE ROCKING-HORSES RUSHED OVER THE GROUND\n\n   VI.  HE CURLED HIMSELF UP IN THE SUN AND CLOSED HIS EYES\n\n  VII.  THE LADY EMMELINA IS ALWAYS KEPT IN HER PROPER PLACE NOW\n\n VIII.  \"WILL YOU COME AND PLAY WITH ME, LITTLE WISDOM?\"\n\n\n\n\nThe Country Called Nonamia\n\nEver so long ago, in the wonderful country of Nonamia, there lived an\nabsent-minded magician.  It is not usual, of course, for a magician to\nbe absent-minded; but then, if it were usual it would not have happened\nin Nonamia.  Nobody knew very much about this particular magician, for\nhe lived in his castle in the air, and it is not easy to visit any one\nwho lives in the air.  He did not want to be visited, however; visitors\nalways meant conversation, and he could not endure conversation.  This,\nby the way, was not surprising, for he was so absent-minded that he\nalways forgot the end of his sentence before he was half-way through\nthe beginning of it; and as for his visitors' remarks--well, if he had\nhad any visitors, he would never have heard their remarks at all.  So,\nwhen some one did call on him, one day,--and that was when he had been\nliving in his castle in the air for seven hundred and seventy-seven\nyears and had almost forgotten who he was and why he was there,--the\nmagician was so astonished that he could not think of anything to say.\n\n\"How did you get here?\" he asked at last; for even an absent-minded\nmagician cannot remain altogether silent, when he looks out of his\ncastle in the air and sees a Princess in a gold and silver frock, with\na bright little crown on her head, floating about on a soft white cloud.\n\n\"Well, I just came, that's all,\" answered the Princess, with a\nparticularly friendly smile.  \"You see, I have never been able to find\nmy own castle in the air, so when the West Wind told me about yours I\nasked him to blow me here.  May I come in and see what it is like?\"\n\n\"Certainly not,\" said the magician, hastily.  \"It is not like anything;\nand even if it were, I should not let you come in.  Don't you know\nthat, if you were to enter another person's castle in the air, it would\nvanish away like a puff of smoke?\"\n\n\"Oh, dear!\" sighed the Princess.  \"I did so want to know what a real\ncastle in the air was like.  I wonder if yours is at all like mine!\"\n\n\"Tell me about yours,\" said the magician.  \"I may be able to help you\nto find it.\"  Of course, he only said this in order to prevent her from\ncoming inside his own castle.  At the same time, a little conversation\nwith a friendly Princess in a gold and silver gown is not at all\nunpleasant, when one has lived in a castle in the air for seven hundred\nand seventy-seven years.\n\n\"My castle in the air is much bigger than yours,\" she explained.  \"It\nhas ever so many rooms in it,--a large room to laugh in and a small\nroom to cry in--\"\n\n\"To cry in?\" interrupted the magician.  \"Why, no one ever thinks of\ncrying in a castle in the air!\"\n\n\"One never knows,\" answered the Princess, gravely.  \"Supposing I were\nto prick my finger, what should I do if there was n't a room to cry in?\nThen, there is a middling-sized room to be serious in; for there is\njust a chance that I might want to be serious sometimes, and it would\nbe as well to have a room, in case.\"\n\n\"Perhaps it would,\" observed the magician, who had never listened so\nattentively to a conversation in the whole of his long life.  \"What\nelse will you have in your castle?\"\n\n\"I shall have lots of nice books that end happily,\" answered the\nPrincess; \"and they shall be talking books, so that I need not read\nthem to find out what they are about.  I shall have plenty of happy\nthoughts in my castle, too, and lots of nice dreams piled up in heaps,\nand--well, there is just one thing more.\"\n\n\"What is that?\" asked the magician.\n\n\"Well, I think I should like to have a Prince in my castle, a nice\nPrince, who would not want to be just dull and princely like all the\nprinces I have ever danced with, but a Prince who would like my castle\nexactly as I have built it and would play with me all day long.  That\nwould be something like a Prince, wouldn't it?\"\n\n\"You could not possibly have a Prince,\" said the magician.  \"If you\nallowed some one else even to look into your castle in the air, it\nwould vanish away like a puff of smoke.  I have lived in my castle for\nseven hundred and seventy-seven years, and I have never allowed any one\nto put a foot in it.\"\n\n\"Is it so beautiful, then, your castle in the air?\" asked the Princess,\nwonderingly.\n\n\"I'm sure I don't know,\" said the absent-minded magician; \"I don't\nthink I ever noticed.  I came to live in it, because it was the only\nplace in which I could be left alone.  That reminds me, that if you do\nnot go away at once I shall be obliged to become exceedingly angry with\nyou.\"\n\n\"By all means,\" said the Princess, who had the most charming manners in\nthe world; \"but I should like to have my castle first.\"\n\n\"I have n't got it here,\" said the magician, looking about him vaguely.\n\"I know I saw it somewhere not long ago, but I can't remember what I\ndid with it.  However, if you ask the people of Nonamia, they will be\nable to tell you where it has gone.  You will find that they are very\nobliging.\"\n\n\"Will they not be surprised?\" asked the Princess.\n\n\"Dear me, no!  The Nonamiacs are never surprised at anything,\" said the\nmagician; and he drew in his head from the window.  The Princess in the\ngold and silver frock sailed away on her cloud, and landed presently in\nthe flat, green country of Nonamia.\n\n\"Have you seen my castle in the air?\" she asked, very politely, of the\nfirst Nonamiac she met.\n\n\"What is it like?\" asked the Nonamiac, without showing the least\nsurprise.\n\n\"It is ever so large and ever so beautiful, and it is packed full of\nhappiness, and there is a nice Prince inside,\" answered the Princess.\n\n\"Ah,\" said the Nonamiac; \"then it must be the one I saw being blown\nalong by the South Wind.  But there was no Prince inside.\"\n\nThe Princess thanked him and hastened away in the direction of the\nSouth Wind until she met another Nonamiac, to whom she explained as\npolitely as before what she wanted to know.\n\n\"Ah,\" said the Nonamiac, \"that must be the castle I met just now as it\nwas being carried off by the North Wind.  But I saw no Prince inside.\"\n\nThe Princess turned round and hurried after the North Wind as fast as\nshe could go.  As soon as she met another Nonamiac, however, she had to\nturn round once more, for he told her that her castle had just been\nstolen by the East Wind; and when she had been walking quite a long\ntime in the direction of the East Wind, she met yet another Nonamiac,\nwho told her that it was the West Wind who had taken away her castle in\nthe air.\n\n\"It is too bad!\" said the little Princess, sitting down exhausted on a\nlarge stone by the side of the road.  \"Why should all the winds be\nplaying with my castle in the air?\"\n\n\"Castles in the air generally go to the winds,\" observed a traveller in\na dusty brown cloak, who was sitting on another large stone, not very\nfar off.  She was quite sure he had not been there the moment before,\nbut, in Nonamia, there was nothing remarkable about that.  The Princess\nwiped the tears out of her eyes with a small lace handkerchief, and\nlooked at the stranger.\n\n\"Mine is a very particular castle in the air, you see,\" she said.  \"It\nis ever so large and ever so beautiful, and it is packed with happiness\nand dreams, and _perhaps_ there is a Prince in it, too.\"\n\n\"A Prince?\" said the stranger.  \"What sort of Prince?\"\n\n\"A nice Prince,\" explained the Princess, \"who can play games and tell\nstories and be amusing.  All the Princes I know can do nothing but\ndance, and they are not at all amusing.  I am afraid, though,\" she\nadded, sighing, \"that I am going to have my castle without a Prince,\nafter all.\"\n\n\"Would it do,\" asked the traveller in the dusty brown cloak, \"if you\nwere to have a Prince without a castle?\"\n\n\"Oh, no!\" answered the Princess, decidedly.  \"If you knew how beautiful\nmy castle in the air is, you would not even ask such a stupid question!\"\n\nThen she again took up her small lace handkerchief, and she brushed the\ndust from her gold and silver gown, and polished up her bright little\ngold crown, and made herself as neat and dainty as a Princess should\nbe; for, in Nonamia, one never knows what may happen next, and it is\njust as well to be prepared.  And, in fact, no sooner was she quite\ntidy than the West Wind came hurrying along with her castle in the air;\nand the Princess gave a shout of joy and sprang inside it; and the West\nWind blew, and blew, and blew, until the castle that was packed full of\nhappiness, and the little Princess in the gold and silver gown, were\nboth completely out of sight.  The traveller looked after them and felt\na little forlorn; then he picked up his stick and walked on until he\ncame to the magician's castle.  This may seem a little surprising, as\nhe had no wings of any kind and the magician's castle was in the air;\nbut it must be remembered that it all happened in Nonamia.\n\n\"Dear, dear!  Here 's another of them!\" grumbled the magician, when he\nlooked out of his window and saw the stranger standing below.  After\nbeing alone for seven hundred and seventy-seven years, it was a little\nexhausting to have two visitors on the same day.  Besides, a traveller\nin a dusty brown cloak is not at all the same thing as a dainty\nPrincess in a gold and silver gown.\n\n\"Good-day,\" said the stranger.  \"Are you the magician who has given a\ncastle in the air to a Princess in a gold and silver frock with a\nbright little crown on her head?\"\n\n\"Very likely; but I cannot say for certain,\" said the absent-minded\nmagician.  \"I believe there was something of the kind, now you come to\nmention it; but I could n't tell you what it was.  However, I don't\nmean to give away any more castles in the air, so the sooner you leave\nme alone, the better.\"\n\n\"I don't want a castle in the air,\" laughed the stranger.  \"People who\nspend their lives in building real houses never have time to build\ncastles in the air!  _I_ want to find the Princess, not the castle.\"\n\n\"That you will never do as long as she is happy in it,\" said the\nmagician.  \"People who live in castles in the air are never to be\nfound, unless they have grown tired of living in them.\"\n\n\"Oho!\" chuckled the stranger.  \"Are _you_ tired of living in yours,\nthen?\"\n\nThe absent-minded magician tried to determine whether he should be\nangry or not, when the stranger said this; but, by the time he had made\nup his mind to be angry, he had forgotten what there was to be angry\nabout, and while he was thinking about it, the man in the dusty brown\ncloak walked away and left him.\n\nEvidently, it was not very long before the Princess grew tired of\nliving in her castle in the air, for the very next day, as the\ntraveller was once more resting on the large stone by the side of the\nroad, down she came, castle and all, and stopped just in front of him.\nTruly, there is no end to the wonderful things that happen in Nonamia!\n\n\"Hullo!\"  said  the  traveller,  smiling.  \"What is it like inside your\ncastle?\"\n\n\"It is not half so nice as I expected to find it,\" said the Princess,\npopping her head out of the top window.  \"You see, there is no one to\nplay with; and even if your castle is the most beautiful castle in the\nworld, it is always dull when there is no one to play with, isn't it?\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" answered the stranger; \"I have never had any one to\nplay with.  What else is wrong with your castle?\"\n\n\"Well,\" continued the Princess, \"it is all very well to have a castle\nthat is packed with happiness; but, when it is packed so tight that you\ncannot get it out without some one to help you, it is not much good, is\nit?\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" answered the stranger; \"my happiness has never been\npacked so tight as all that.  Have you anything else to complain of?\"\n\n\"A great many things,\" said the Princess.  \"It is all that stupid\nmagician's fault.  When I said, 'a small room to cry in,' I did n't\nreally mean a room to _cry_ in, did I?  But every way I turn, there is\nalways the room to cry in, staring me in the face!  I am sure there is\nsomething seriously wrong with my castle in the air.\"\n\n\"No doubt about it,\" said the traveller; \"and it is clearly the\nmagician's fault.\"\n\n\"When you came to live in your castle in the air,\" continued the\nPrincess, plaintively, \"did you find that it was very different from\nthe one you had built?\"\n\nThe traveller in the dusty brown cloak burst out laughing.\n\n\"I have no time to build castles in the air,\" he said.  \"I build real\nhouses for other people to live in, people who would, perhaps, have no\nhouses at all if I did not build them.  That is more important than\nbuilding castles in the air for one's self.\"\n\n\"What are your real houses like?\" asked the Princess.\n\n\"They are strong,\" answered the stranger, proudly.  \"All the four winds\njoined together could not blow them down.  No one has ever built such\nstrong houses as mine.\"\n\n\"Are they beautiful, too?\" asked the Princess.\n\n\"I have no time to look after that,\" answered the stranger.  \"I build\nmore houses than any one else in the world; and still, there are people\nwho are waiting for houses to live in.  I must build as fast as I can,\nday after day, year after year.\"\n\n\"Then why are you not building houses now?\" asked the Princess.  The\ngreat builder looked sorrowful.\n\n\"There is something wrong about my real houses, too,\" he confessed.\n\"The people who live in them are never quite contented; and I have come\naway to think out a new plan by myself, so that the next houses I build\nshall be the most wonderful houses in the world.\"\n\nThe Princess leaned her chin on her hand, and looked quite thoughtful\nfor a moment or two.\n\n\"May I come and help you to build real houses, for a change?\" she said\npresently.  \"I am dreadfully tired of building castles in the air that\ndo not turn out properly--though, of course, that was principally the\nmagician's fault!  Still, if you were to show me the way, I might be\nable to build something real that would turn out properly; and that\nwould be ever so much more amusing.\"\n\n\"It is not at all amusing,\" said the traveller, shaking his head.  \"You\nwould soon grow tired of it; besides, you would have no Prince to play\nwith.\"\n\n\"I don't think I want a Prince to play with,\" said the charming\nPrincess in the gold and silver frock.  \"He might turn out to be as\ndull as my castle in the air, especially if the magician had anything\nto do with it!  I would much sooner come and help you to build real\nhouses.\"\n\nThe traveller in the dusty brown cloak still shook his head.\n\n\"Little ladies in gold and silver gowns can only build castles in the\nair,\" he said.\n\n\"Do the people who live in your houses never build castles in the air?\"\nasked the Princess.\n\n\"I never thought of asking them,\" answered the great builder.  \"I have\nbeen too much occupied in building their real houses.\"\n\n\"Then let us go and ask them now,\" said the Princess; and she came down\nfrom her castle in the air, and stepped once more on to the dusty road,\nand held out her little white hand to the traveller.  Her castle in the\nair vanished like a puff of smoke the moment she stepped out of it.\n\n\"What would be the use of that?\" asked the traveller, smiling.  He took\nthe little white hand, however, for no one could have refused that much\nto such a very charming Princess.\n\n\"Why,\" said the Princess in the gold and silver frock, \"then we could\nmake their real houses just like their castles in the air; and only\nthink how packed with happiness they would be!\"\n\nThe traveller looked at her in amazement.  It was certainly astonishing\nthat so great a builder as he should find out what was wrong with his\nhouses, from a Princess with a bright little crown on her head who had\nnever done anything but build castles in the air.  Still, we must\nremember that it all happened in Nonamia; and that accounts for a great\ndeal.\n\n\"You are quite right,\" said the traveller; \"you know far more about it\nthan I do.  You shall come and help me to build real houses, and they\nshall be the most wonderful houses that have ever been built.\"\n\n\"All beautiful to look at, and packed with happiness inside!\" cried the\ndainty little Princess, clapping her hands for joy.  \"And we won't let\nthat stupid magician spoil our real houses, will we?\"\n\nThe magician was looking out of his window at nothing at all, when they\ncame past his castle, hand in hand.\n\n\"We are going to build the most wonderful houses in the world,\" cried\nthe Princess,--\"ever so much more wonderful than the stupid castle in\nthe air you gave _me_!\"\n\nThis was not very gracious of her, for, after all, the magician had\ngiven her exactly what she had built for herself.  However, as he had\nalready forgotten both of them and could not think of anything to say,\nand as they were in too great a hurry to stay and help him, there is\nnothing more to be said about the magician, except that he is still\nliving in his castle in the air and looking out of his window at\nnothing at all, which is a right and proper occupation for a magician\nwho is absent-minded.  As for the traveller and the charming Princess,\nthey spent the rest of their days in building the most wonderful houses\nin the world for the people who had nowhere to live.  And as for the\npeople who had nowhere to live, it was only natural that they should\nall find their way to the country called Nonamia, where a little lady\nin a gold and silver gown taught them to build a castle in the air, and\na great builder in a dusty brown cloak made it into a real house that\nwas packed with happiness.\n\nIt is a little difficult to believe that this is all true; but then, it\nmust be remembered that it all happened in Nonamia, ever so long ago!\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: THE WYMPS SAY THAT QUEER BEGAN IT]\n\n\n\n\nWhy the Wymps Cried\n\nThe wymps and the fairies have never been able to agree.  Nobody quite\nknows why, though the Fairy Queen, who is the wisest person in the\nwhole world, was once heard to say that jealousy had something to do\nwith it.  The fairies say, however, that they would never dream of\nbeing jealous of people who live at the back of the sun and do not know\nmanners; while the wymps say it would be absurd to be jealous of any\none who lives at the front of the sun and cannot take a joke.  All the\nsame, the Fairy Queen is always right, so somebody must certainly be\njealous of somebody; and it is well known that if the wymps and the\nfairies are invited to the same party, it is sure to end in a quarrel.\nIt is really a wonder that the Fairy Queen has not lost patience with\nthe wymps long ago; but people say that she has more affection for her\nnaughty little subjects at the back of the sun than any one would\nimagine; and the Fairy Queen is so wonderful that it is quite possible\nto believe this.\n\nOnce, matters became so serious that there would have been a real war,\nif the Queen had not called an assembly of her subjects on the\nspot--which happened to be on the roof of a blacksmith's forge--and\nasked them what the fuss was all about.\n\n\"Please, your Majesty,\" said one fairy, half crying, \"the wymps shut me\nup at the back of the sun for fifteen days, and they gave me nothing to\neat, your Majesty; they said that if I couldn't take a joke I couldn't\ntake anything.  And I should never _wish_ to take one of their jokes,\nplease your Majesty.\"\n\n\"Do not trouble about that,\" said the Fairy Queen, gravely.  \"For my\npart, I shall never expect you to take a joke from any one.  Now,\nCapricious, what have they done to you?\" she added, as another fairy\nwith a round dimpled face came forward in a great hurry.\n\n\"Please, your Majesty,\" began Capricious, trying to make a very\ncheerful voice sound extremely doleful, \"I found a wymp in the nursery,\nafter the children had gone to bed; and he was quite upset because the\nWymp King had made a joke and no one could see it; and he asked me to\ngo behind the sun with him, so that I might help him to see the joke\nthat the King had made.  But when I got there, your Majesty, I said it\nwas much too dark to see anything and I was not at all surprised that\nno one could see the King's jokes; and the King was so angry that he\nordered me to be poked through the sun again; and here I am, please\nyour Majesty.\"\n\nHer Majesty smiled approvingly.\n\n\"You have made a joke worth two of the Wymp King's,\" she said; \"and I\nshall appoint you as a reward to go to Wympland with a message from me.\nDo not trouble to thank me,\" she added, as the round dimpled face of\nCapricious grew a little crestfallen, \"for there is no time.  The sun\nis just going to rise, and the moment it is above the horizon you must\ngo straight through it once more and tell the King that I invite him to\nbreakfast in Fairyland.  And now I must be off, for I have a smile to\npaint on the face of every child in the world before it wakes.\"\n\nSo the Fairy Queen flew away to paint a million or two of the most\nbeautiful smiles in the world; and the other fairies popped down\nthrough the roof and did all the blacksmith's work for him and dropped\na nice dream on his pillow just to show they had been there; and\nCapricious sat on the edge of the chimney-pot, until the sun came above\nthe horizon and it was time for her to take the Queen's message to\nWympland.\n\nThe Wymp King knew better than to refuse the Queen's invitation to\nbreakfast; so he yawned three hundred and fifty-four times, rubbed his\neyes to keep them open--for it is a well-known thing that the Wymp King\nis nearly always asleep--and started off in the direction of Fairyland.\nThe Queen was as pleased to see him as if he had never been naughty at\nall; but, of course, she was far too much of a Queen to let him guess\nthat he was really there to be scolded.  So she made him sit next to\nher at breakfast, and gave him a cup of stinging-nettle tea to keep him\nawake, and allowed him to make as many jokes as he pleased.  The Wymp\nKing, in consequence, was extremely happy; and when the meal was over\nand the Queen began to look stern, he had to think very hard indeed\nbefore he remembered that he was nothing but a naughty little wymp\nafter all.\n\n\"This state of things cannot go on,\" said the Fairy Queen.  \"What is\nthe use of my being a Queen if I am not to be obeyed?\"\n\n\"Your Majesty's chief use is to look like a Queen and to forgive your\ndisobedient subjects,\" said the Wymp King, who had taken so much\nstinging-nettle tea that he was almost bristling with jokes.\n\n\"Ah,\" sighed the Fairy Queen, looking sideways at the Wymp King, \"it is\nnot at all easy to rule a country like mine.\"\n\n\"It is very fortunate for the country to be ruled by a Queen like you,\"\nsaid the Wymp King, who had not been so wide awake for a thousand years.\n\n\"Do you think so?  Then Wympland shall have a Queen for a change, and\nyou shall stay here instead and take a holiday,\" said her Majesty,\npromptly.  The Wymp King saw that he was outwitted, but he would not\nhave been a wymp if he had lost his temper about it; so he chuckled\ngood-humouredly, and pretended not to see that he had really been\ncheated of his kingdom and was nothing but a prisoner in Fairyland.\nHowever, the Fairy Queen gave him very little time even to keep his\ntemper, for she turned him into a tortoise and sent him to sleep under\na flower-pot in the garden; and then she called for Capricious to come\nand help her to choose a Queen for Wympland.  Capricious put her round,\ndimpled face on one side, and thought deeply for thirteen seconds and a\nhalf.\n\n\"There is Molly, the shoemaker's daughter,\" said Capricious, when she\nhad finished thinking.  \"She is seven years old, and she is almost as\nfond of sleeping as his Wympish Majesty.  She would make an excellent\nQueen for Wympland.\"\n\n\"I remember Molly,\" said the Fairy Queen, thoughtfully.  \"She has ruled\nthe shoemaker and the shoemaker's wife and the shoemaker's customers\nfor seven years and a half; doubtless, she will have no difficulty in\nruling Wympland.  So let no time be lost, Capricious, and see that\nMolly wakes up from her morning sleep and finds herself on the Wymp\nKing's throne.  She will look after the wymps for a time, and I shall\nhave some peace.  Besides,\" added the Fairy Queen with her wise smile,\n\"if the wymps can only be made to cry for once in their lives, we shall\nprobably have no more difficulty with them.\"\n\nCapricious, who was just an ordinary little fairy and never thought\nabout anything much except singing and dancing, was quite unable to\nunderstand the Queen's last remark.\n\n\"Shall I tell Molly what she is to do when she gets there, please your\nMajesty?\" she asked in rather a puzzled tone.\n\n\"Do?\" said the Queen.  \"The rulers of Wympland never have to do\nanything.  If Molly will only keep her subjects amused, that is all\nthey will expect from her.\"\n\nThat was how it was settled, and that was how Molly woke up from her\nmorning sleep and found herself on the Wymp King's throne, with four\nlittle wymps standing in a row just in front of her.  Molly stared at\nthe throne on which she was sitting, stared around at the dimly lighted\nLand of the Wymps, and stared at the four little wymps who stood and\nlaughed at her.\n\n\"Who are you?\" she asked, opening her eyes as wide as she could.  \"Are\nyou live dolls, or fairies, or just other children for me to play with?\"\n\nThe four wymps laughed more than ever when she said this, and began to\nsing a funny little song all together, just to explain who they were.\nThis was the song:--\n\n  \"We are Skilful and Wilful and Captious and Queer,\n  There 's nothing to fright you and nothing to fear!\n  Four little wymps at the back of the sun,\n  Brimful of wympery, rubbish, and fun!\n\n  \"You 'll find we are wympish; but then, we 're not bores,\n  Though we own to a weakness for wiping off scores.\n  Ah!  Skilful and Wilful and Captious and Queer\n  Are never far off when mischief is near!\n\n  \"Of Kings we 've had many, but never a Queen;\n  So bewymping a monarch we 've surely not seen;\n  And--Skilful and Wilful and Captious and Queer\n  Though we are, yet we know how to welcome you here!\n\n  \"You 'll surely bewymp all the wymps you come near\n  Besides Skilful and Wilful and Captious and Queer;\n  By the time you have gone and your wymping is done,\n  The world will have changed at the back of the sun.\"\n\n\n\"Are you really wymps?\" exclaimed Molly, when the four little fellows\nhad finished explaining who they were; for, like every properly\neducated child, Molly knew quite well that the wymps lived at the back\nof the sun, although she had never been there before.\n\n\"To be sure we are,\" answered Skilful and Wilful and Captious and\nQueer.  \"And you are our new Queen.\"\n\n\"Am I?\" said Molly.  \"Oh, what fun!\"\n\n\"Of course it's fun,\" said Skilful.  \"Everything is fun up here.\"\n\n\"Except the King's jokes,\" said Wilful.\n\n\"And the Fairy Queen's commands,\" said Captious.\n\n\"And the interference of the fairies,\" said Queer.\n\n\"How do the fairies interfere?\" asked Molly.\n\n\"They come without being invited,\" said Skilful.\n\n\"They don't play fair,\" said Wilful.\n\n\"They always expect to win,\" said Captious.\n\n\"They cry for nothing at all,\" said Queer.\n\n\"I cry sometimes,\" observed Molly.\n\n\"When?\" asked all four, in a tone of alarm.\n\n\"When I 'm hungry,\" said Molly, \"or tired; or sometimes, when I tumble\ndown; or when I feel cross.\"\n\n\"You should never cry,\" said Skilful, in a superior tone.  \"It takes up\nso much time, and when you 've done crying you 've got exactly the same\nthing to cry about as before.  If you are hungry, don't cry but get\nsomething to eat.\"\n\n\"And if you 're tired, don't cry but go to sleep.  Nothing could be\nsimpler,\" said Wilful.\n\n\"And if you tumble down, don't cry but pick yourself up again,\" said\nCaptious.  \"If you know how to tumble down properly, it is the best fun\nin the world.  We spend most of our time up here in learning new ways\nof tumbling down.\"\n\n\"And if you are cross,\" added Queer; and then he stopped and looked\ndoubtfully at the other three.  \"What is she to do if she feels cross?\"\nhe asked them.  They shook their heads in reply.\n\n\"Nobody is ever cross in Wympland,\" they explained to Molly.  \"People\nwho know how to make jokes, really _good_ jokes, soon learn how to take\nthem as well, and then there is nothing left to be cross about.  You\ndon't feel cross now, do you?\"\n\nMolly assured them that she did not feel in the least cross, and their\nfaces brightened again.\n\n\"Perhaps, if you will tell us when you begin to feel cross we shall be\nable to do something for you,\" they said; \"but, whatever you do, you\nmust not cry in Wympland.  It is only the fairies who do that, and they\ndon't know any better.  As long as the sun has had a country at the\nback of it, no wymp has ever been known to cry.  Now, let us go and\nfind somebody to tease!\"\n\n\"I thought Queens could always do as they like,\" objected Molly, as\nthey took her two hands and made her jump down from the throne without\nfinding out whether she wished to come or not.\n\n\"Oh, no,\" said Skilful and Wilful and Captious and Queer.  \"You make a\ngreat mistake.  The King always does as he is told in Wympland.  So\ncome along with us and see us tease somebody.\"\n\n\"I don't want to tease anybody,\" said Molly, decidedly.  \"I am going to\nbe a real Queen.  Real Queens do just as they like; it is only Kings\nwho do as they are told.  If you are not going to let me have my own\nway I might just as well have stopped at home, instead of coming all\nthis way on purpose to be your Queen!\"\n\nThe four little wymps looked very perplexed.  \"May she do as she\nlikes?\" they asked one another, and shook their four little heads\ndoubtfully.\n\n\"She might order us about,\" said Skilful.\n\n\"Or laugh at us,\" said Wilful.\n\n\"Or expect us to obey her,\" said Captious.\n\nBut Queer turned three somersaults in the air, just to show that he did\nnot care a bit if they did not agree with him; and then he bowed to\nMolly almost as gracefully as a fairy might have done at the front of\nthe sun.\n\n\"She is a real Queen,\" he said; \"and real Queens must be obeyed.\"\n\nAnd when Molly declared that she should probably cry if they did not\nimmediately allow her to have her own way, the other three wymps were\nobliged to follow Queer's example.\n\n\"You are a real Queen, and you may do as you like,\" they said in a\nresigned tone; and Molly clapped her hands with delight.\n\n\"Then please fetch me some plum-cake, and a large ice, and lots of\nbarley sugar; I am so hungry,\" she said.  Immediately, everything she\nasked for was lying before her on the King's throne, and they all sat\ndown and enjoyed such a dinner as only a wymp or a real Queen would\nknow how to appreciate.  When they had finished, Molly said she should\nlike to see the rest of Wympland, for nobody at the front of the sun\nhad ever been able to tell her anything about it; so they led her all\nover it, which did not take them longer than the rest of the afternoon,\nfor the world at the back of the sun is smaller than some people think,\nand that is a very good thing, for after all it is better to live on\nthe right side of the sun if one is not a wymp.\n\n\"It is a very flat country,\" said the little Queen, as she trotted\nalong with two wymps on each side of her.\n\n\"It has to be flat,\" explained Skilful.  \"If it were tilted ever so\nlittle we should roll into the sun and out at the other side, don't you\nsee; and no true wymp ever wants to do that.\"\n\n\"It is rather dark, too,\" continued the little Queen.\n\n\"Of course,\" said Wilful, proudly.  \"It is always the same here.  Now,\nwhen you get to the front of the sun you never know whether it is going\nto be light or dark.  There are no surprises of that sort at the back\nof the sun.\"\n\n\"And where,\" asked Molly, \"is the royal palace?\"\n\n\"Wherever you like,\" answered Captious in an obliging tone.  \"Would you\nlike it here, or will you have it a little nearer the sun?  Of course\nit is warmer, near the sun, but you will find it much noisier because\nthe stars are so fond of chattering.\"\n\n\"I should like it here, please,\" said Molly, who did not want to wait\nanother minute for her palace.  Hardly were her words spoken than a\nperfectly charming little palace appeared in front of her, just large\nenough for such a very small Queen to feel happy in.  It was all made\nof rainbows and starshine and dewdrops; every thing that is bright and\nsweet-looking had helped to make her palace, and from the very middle\nof it rose a tall, silvery bell-tower, from which peals of laughter\nwere ringing merrily.\n\n\"Oh, oh! how beautiful!\" exclaimed Molly.  \"But how is it that my\npalace is so bright while Wympland is so dull?\"\n\n\"Ah,\" said Queer, softly; \"we wished for the palace, you see, and the\nthings we wish for are never dull.\"\n\n\"It is a dream-palace,\" added Wilful; \"and dreams are never dull\neither.\"\n\n\"I hope it will not go away as my dreams do when I wake up in the\nmorning,\" said Molly.\n\n\"Oh, no,\" they assured her.  \"It cannot disappear until we wish it to\ngo away again; and that we shall never do as long as it induces you to\nstay with us.\"\n\n\"Do you always wish for what you want?\" asked Molly.\n\n\"Dear me, yes,\" said Captious.  \"What is the use of having a lot of\nthings lying about that you don't want?  There is only just enough room\nin Wympland for the things we do want, so we wish for them as we want\nthem, and that is much more convenient.  You should try it.\"\n\n\"Everything you see here,\" added Skilful, \"has been wished for, some\ntime or another.  Neither Wympland, nor the wymps, nor our bewymping\nlittle Queen would be here at all if somebody had not wished for them.\"\n\n\"And if we were all to wish hard at the same moment,\" said Wilful, \"not\none of us would be left standing here, nor would there be any country\nat all at the back of the sun.\"\n\n\"But we shall never wish that, now that we have a real Queen of our\nown,\" said Queer.\n\nThen, for the first time, Molly noticed that this strange little\ncountry at the back of the sun had no people in it; for, ever since she\nhad waked up on the King's throne, she had seen no one except Skilful\nand Wilful and Captious and Queer.\n\n\"Where are all the other wymps?\" she cried.\n\n\"Ah,\" they said, mysteriously; \"most people don't know it, but the\nwymps go through the sun every morning and spend the day in making fun\nfor the people on the other side.  That is how the people down in the\nworld are taught to laugh instead of to cry.  There would be no\nlaughter at all at the front of the sun if it were not for the wymps.\"\n\n\"How strange!\" said Molly.  \"I always thought it was wrong to make fun\nof people.\"\n\n\"So it is,\" said Queer; \"nobody but a bad wymp would do such a thing.\nA true wymp makes fun _for_ people, and that is a very different thing.\"\n\n\"A _very_ different thing,\" echoed the other three.  \"We only make fun\nof people who have never learnt how to laugh, and very difficult it is\nto make them into fun at all.  It's very poor fun when it is made,\ntoo,--most of it,\" they added, sighing.\n\nMolly was just going to ask them how they managed to make people into\nfun at all, when a number of sounds like pistol-shots suddenly came\nfrom the direction of the sun, and the four wymps grew wildly excited\nand seized her by the hands and began to race over the ground with her\nas fast as they could.\n\n\"The wymps have come home!\" they gasped breathlessly.  \"If we make all\nthe haste we can, we shall be there in time to see them arrive.\"\n\nIt seemed to Molly that to run after her subjects was a curious thing\nfor a real Queen to do.  However, she was far too much out of breath to\nsay anything, and the next moment they had reached the back of the sun;\nand there were dozens of little wymps, all tumbling through it, one on\nthe top of the other, until they made a large heap of themselves at the\nfeet of their new little Queen.\n\n\"They are bidding you welcome,\" whispered Queer, as the heap remained\nmotionless at Molly's feet; and, except for the fact that a good many\nshouts of laughter were coming from it, no one would have thought it\nwas made of wymps at all.\n\n\"Oh, please get up,\" implored their little Queen.  \"It is very nice of\nyou to be so glad to see me, but I am sure it must be very\nuncomfortable to lie about on the floor like that.\"\n\nImmediately, the heap dissolved itself into wymps again; and they\ncrowded round Molly, tumbling up against her so clumsily and chattering\nand laughing so noisily, that she thought it was quite time to remind\nthem that she was a real Queen.\n\n\"Do you think you could make a little less noise?\" she begged them.  \"I\ndon't like noise at all.  If you will only try to speak one at a time,\nI may be able to answer everybody.\"\n\nThe wymps were so amazed to hear that she did not like noise that they\nbecame silent for a whole minute in order to think about it.  \"You\nsee,\" said Queer, apologetically, \"we have never had a Queen before, so\nwe are not quite sure what she does like.  Kings always like plenty of\nnoise; at least, it does not seem to wake them up, and that is the\ngreat thing.\"\n\n\"Yes, that is it!\" cried all the little wymps together.  \"We have never\nhad a Queen before, so we don't quite know how to treat her.\"\n\n\"Supposing,\" continued Queer, \"that you were to tell us the kind of\nthings that a real Queen would like us to do?\"\n\n\"Yes, yes!\" shouted all the other wymps, gleefully.  \"Tell us what a\nreal Queen would like us to do!\"\n\nSo Molly clambered up on the King's throne, and tried to look as much\nlike a Queen as a very little girl, in a very short frock and a very\npink pinafore, knows how to look; and the wymps stood in front of her,\nclosely packed together; and she began to tell them some of the things\nthat a real Queen would like them to do.\n\n\"First of all,\" said Molly, \"a real Queen does n't like her toes\ntrodden on, and her pinafore crumpled, and her hair pulled.  She does\nn't like being screamed at, either; and she never allows herself to be\nordered about by any one.  She likes to order other people about\ninstead, and she likes the other people to be very pleased when she\norders them about, and not to go slowly and look disagreeable and\ngrumble.  She likes a new frock every Sunday, and a birthday every\nmonth; and she always drinks milk for supper.  It is supper time now,\"\nadded the little Queen, beginning to yawn.\n\nAll the wymps at once hurled themselves helter-skelter through the sun\nagain, in search of milk for their new Queen's supper.  But Queer ran\nfaster than any of them, and he took the very milk that Molly's own\nmother had just milked into the pail for herself; and the strangest\nthing of all was that, although the pail became empty before her eyes\nand she had to go without any supper, Molly's mother was quite happy\nafter that and did not worry any more about her little girl who had so\nstrangely disappeared in the morning.  That shows what the wymps can do\nwhen they forget to be wympish.  And Molly drank her milk and went to\nsleep in her dream-palace, and was the happiest little Queen on either\nside of the sun; and the wymps--well, it is impossible to describe what\nthe wymps felt like.\n\nMolly was Queen of Wympland for a great many days, and there had never\nreigned such peace at the back of the sun, nor in the whole world of\nFairyland either.  It was so remarkable that the Fairy Queen sent for\nCapricious, one day, and asked her why nobody had anything to grumble\nabout.  Any one might have thought from the Fairy Queen's tone that she\nwas not particularly pleased at so much contentment, but of course that\ncould not possibly be the case.\n\n\"Please, your Majesty,\" said Capricious, who had been waiting anxiously\nto be asked this very question for quite a long time, \"it is because\nthe wymps are so much occupied in looking after their new Queen that\nthey have no time to play tricks on us.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" said her Majesty, smiling wisely, \"does she seem happy at the\nback of the sun?\"\n\n\"Everybody is happy at the back of the sun, please your Majesty,\" said\nCapricious.  \"They play games all day long to amuse their new Queen,\nand they never quarrel except for the right to do things for her little\nMajesty.  If she stays there much longer it will soon be impossible to\ndistinguish a wymp from a fairy!\"\n\n\"It is time she went home again,\" said the Fairy Queen, smiling wisely\nfor the second time.  \"How do the shoemaker and his wife get on without\nher?\"\n\n\"Their house is so quiet that the shoemaker has never made better\nshoes,\" answered Capricious.  \"The shoemaker's wife, though, can do\nnothing but sit out in the sunshine and wait, for she cannot bear the\nsilence indoors.  Even wympcraft cannot make her forget everything,\nyour Majesty.\"\n\n\"Molly must certainly go home again,\" said the Fairy Queen; \"and she\nmust go to-morrow morning.\"\n\nCapricious sighed dismally.\n\n\"Must she really go, your Majesty?\" she ventured to say; \"and will the\nwymps be free again to plague us with their tiresome wympish jokes?\"\n\nThe Fairy Queen smiled wisely for the third time.\n\n\"Wait until to-morrow morning,\" she said.  \"You may have as good a joke\nagainst the wymps as they have ever had against you.\"\n\nThat night, Molly had a dream straight from Fairyland which reminded\nher that, although she had a whole palace of her own and quantities of\nlittle subjects to do her bidding, she was really the daughter of the\nshoemaker on the other side of the sun.  So, when Skilful and Wilful\nand Captious and Queer came to play with her in the morning, she told\nthem she could not be their Queen any longer, as it was time for her to\ngo back to the front of the sun.  The four little fellows looked more\ndismal than a wymp had ever been known to look before, and so did all\nthe wymps in Wympland as soon as they heard that their bewymping Queen\nwas going away from them.\n\n\"Can we do nothing to make you stop with us?\" they asked her.  \"Have we\nbeen too rough with you, after all?  You must forgive us if we have,\nfor we are not accustomed to Queens, at the back of the sun.  If we try\nto be less noisy, will you not stay with us a little longer?\"\n\n\"Dear little wymps,\" cried Molly; \"you never tread on my toes now, nor\ncrumple my pinafore, nor pull my hair.  I do not want to go away from\nyou, but it is time for me to go back to the other side of the sun.\nWill you please show me how to get there, dear little wymps?\"\n\nWhen they saw that she was quite determined to go, they led her very\nsadly to the back of the sun; and nobody made a single joke on the way,\nand there was not a smile to be seen in the whole of that sad little\nprocession.  There had never been so little laughter and so much\ndolefulness in the Land of the Wymps.\n\n\"How am I to get through that?\" asked Molly, rubbing the tears out of\nher eyes and looking up at the back of the big round sun; \"and shall I\ntumble all the way down when I get to the other side?\"\n\n\"It is quite easy,\" explained Skilful.  \"You have only to shut your\neyes and jump through it, and the sunbeams will catch you on the other\nside; and you can slide down the one that shines into the shoemaker's\ngarden, where your mother sits watching for you.\"\n\nThen Molly rubbed her eyes again, for there were still a great many\ntears in them, and the more she rubbed them away the faster they came\nagain, until she was really afraid the wymps would see that she was\ncrying; and that would never do, for she felt quite sure that a real\nQueen should never cry.  So she kissed her hand to her sad little\nsubjects and promised to come back again some day; and then she shut\nher eyes tight and jumped through the big round sun and slid down the\nsunbeam that shone into the shoemaker's garden.  And as she sped down\nthe shining, slippery sunbeam, she could hear Skilful and Wilful and\nCaptious and Queer in the distance, singing their funny little song\nabout her:--\n\n  \"You have surely bewymped all the wymps you came near,\n  Besides Skilful and Wilful and Captious and Queer!\n  And now that you 've gone and your wymping is done,\n  The world has grown sad at the back of the sun.\"\n\nMolly never knew what happened when they finished singing; but the\nfairies knew, because they were hiding all round the edge of the sun at\nthe time.  And it was the most remarkable thing that had ever happened\nin Wympland.\n\nThe wymps say that Queer began it; and this is extremely likely, for\nQueer was always a little different from the other wymps.  Anyhow, they\nvery soon followed his example; and so it was that all the wymps at the\nback of the sun sat down on the ground and cried, because their\nbewymping little Queen was no longer with them.  And all the fairies\nwho were hiding popped up their heads and peered over the edge of the\nsun and stared in amazement at what was going on in Wympland.\n\nSo the Fairy Queen was right, as she always is, and the wymps were made\nto cry for once in their lives; and the fairies have as good a joke\nagainst the wymps as the wymps ever had against the fairies.  Perhaps\nthat is why the wymps play so few tricks on the fairies, now; but the\nFairy Queen only smiles when people say that, so she probably knows\nbetter.\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: SUNNY WAS SO ASTONISHED THAT SHE STOPPED CRYING AT ONCE]\n\n\n\n\nThe Story of Honey and Sunny\n\nThere was once a wonderful country in which everything was beautiful.\nAll the trees, and the flowers, and the birds, and the animals were\njust as beautiful as could be imagined; and the shops, and the houses,\nand the palaces were the same.  Of course all the little girls and boys\nwere beautiful, too; but that is the same everywhere.  Now, whether it\nwas because of the beauty of his kingdom, or whether it was merely on\naccount of his royal birth, it is impossible to say, but the King was\nso extremely nervous that his life was no pleasure to him.\n\n\"I cannot bear anything noisy,\" he said.  \"Noise is so very alarming.\"\nSo when the baby Princess cried, he sent her away to another King's\ncountry, to be brought up in a village nobody had ever heard of, so\nthat her royal father should not be disturbed.  And when he heard that\nthe Queen, his wife, had gone after her, he hardly raised his royal\neyebrows.  \"She laughed too much,\" he observed, thoughtfully.\n\nThe palace grew quieter day by day.  The ladies in waiting were\nforbidden to wear high heels because they made such a clatter on the\nmarble floors; so everybody knew for the first time how short everybody\nelse was.  Every courtier whose boots creaked was instantly banished,\nand if he had a cough into the bargain he was beheaded as well; but the\nclimate was so delightful that this very rarely happened.  In time,\neverybody at court took to speaking in a whisper, in order to spare the\nKing's nerves; and it even became the fashion to talk as little as\npossible.  The King was immensely pleased at this.  \"Anybody can talk,\"\nhe said; \"but it is a sign of great refinement to be silent.\"  After\nthat, even the ladies in waiting were sometimes silent for quite half\nan hour.  It is true that the King talked whenever he felt inclined,\nbut that, of course, was necessary.\n\nThe silence of the court soon spread over the country.  Laws were made\nto forbid the people to keep chickens, or pigs, or cows, or anything\nthat was noisy; and the children were ordered, by royal proclamation,\nnever to laugh, and never to cry, and never to quarrel, so that when\nthe King rode out from his palace not a sound should meet his ears.\nBut this was not all; for the birds were so frightened by the stillness\nof everything that they stopped singing altogether, and the leaves on\nthe trees ceased to rustle when the wind blew; and even the frogs and\nthe toads were startled at the hoarseness of their own voices and did\nnot croak any more, which was the most remarkable thing that ever\nhappened, for it takes a very great deal to persuade a frog or a toad\nthat his voice is not charming.  The only sound that broke the silence\nwas the occasional humming of bees, for the King still allowed the\npeople to keep bees if they liked.  \"Bees are not noisy,\" he said.\n\"They do not grunt, or bark, or croak.  I can bear to listen to the\nhumming of bees.\"  Even the bees did not hum so much as bees generally\ndo; for the sun soon found that nobody laughed when he was shining his\nvery best, so he went behind a cloud in a temper and stayed there for\nyears and years and years; and the bees could not do without sunshine,\neven if the King could.  So the country grew less beautiful and more\ngloomy every year.\n\nBut the village without a name in the other King's country, where the\nlittle Princess was being brought up, was a very different kind of\nplace.  It was full of happy people, who made as much noise as they\npleased, and laughed when they were glad, and cried when they were sad,\nand never bothered about anything at all.  And the chickens ran in and\nout of the cottages with the children, and the birds sang all the year\nround, and the sun had never been known to stop shining for a single\nminute.  It was the jolliest country imaginable, for nobody interfered\nwith anybody else, and the King never made any laws at all, and the\nonly punishment that existed was for grumbling.  It is true that there\nwas hardly any conversation, for everybody talked at once and nobody\nheard what anybody else said; but as it was not often worth hearing,\nthat did not matter in the least.  Everybody was happy and jolly, and\nthat was the great thing.\n\nLittle Sunny the Princess grew up without knowing that she was a\nPrincess at all; and nobody else knew that she was a Princess either;\nand even the Queen had almost forgotten that she was a King's wife.\nThat was nobody's concern though; and they lived in the tiniest cottage\nof all, and Sunny romped with every girl and boy in the place and was\nloved by them all.  They had called her Sunny because she could look\nstraight at the sun without blinking, which was more than the boldest\nof them could do; and it was such a good name for her that she was\nnever called anything else.  Besides, nobody knew her real name, and as\nit is much too long to be mentioned here, and as the Queen had\nforgotten it long ago, it really is of no consequence at all.\n\nOne fine day, Sunny sat up in the chocolate tree, listening to one of\nthe stories that Honey the gardener's son was so fond of telling her;\nand Honey the gardener's son lay on the grass below, and tried to catch\nthe chocolate drops with which she was pelting him.\n\n\"Why are all your stories so much alike, Honey?\" asked Sunny the\nPrincess.  \"Why does the Prince always go out into the world to find a\nPrincess?  Why should n't the Princess go and find the Prince, for a\nchange?  I wish I was a Princess; I would start to-morrow.  What fun!\"\n\nShe laughed her very happiest laugh and found an extra large chocolate\ndrop and threw it into his mouth.  Honey laughed as well as any one\ncould laugh with a chocolate drop in his mouth, and tried to think of\nan answer to her question.  Honey was not his real name either, but it\nwas the one they had given him because he knew the language of the\nbees, as, indeed, every true son of a gardener should.\n\n\"Perhaps the stories are wrong,\" he said.  \"I only tell them to you as\nI have them from the bees.  Or perhaps none of those particular\nPrincesses ever wanted to go out into the world to find anybody.\"\n\n\"Or perhaps,\" added Sunny, \"they were just found before they had time\nto look for a Prince themselves.  Do you think that was it?  Anyhow, I\ndon't want to wait for a Prince, for Princes never come this way at\nall; so I am going out into the world to seek my own fortune, and I\nshall start this very moment!\"\n\nShe jumped down from the chocolate tree as she spoke, and danced round\nHoney, clapping her hands with excitement.  Honey was not surprised,\nfor nobody was ever surprised at anything in that country, but he was\njust a little bit sad.\n\n\"And I shall ask the first Prince I meet if he will come back with me,\"\ncontinued Sunny; \"just as the Princes always ask the Princesses in the\nstories.  He won't know I am not a Princess, will he?  And you won't\ntell him, will you, Honey dear?\"\n\n\"I shall not be there,\" said Honey the gardener's son.  \"I don't think\nI want to look for a Princess; and I certainly cannot leave my garden.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" said Sunny, and she was almost grave for an instant.  \"But I will\ncome back some day, when I have found my Prince, and then you shall be\nmy gardener,\" she went on consolingly.  \"And you don't mind my going\nwithout you, do you, Honey dear?\"\n\n\"The Princes in the stories always went alone,\" answered Honey.\n\nSo that was how Sunny the Princess went out into the world, without\nknowing that she was a Princess.  And of course everybody in the\nvillage missed her; but the Queen, her mother, and Honey, the\ngardener's son, missed her most of all.  Before she went, however,\nHoney taught her a song which she was to sing if she ever found herself\nin trouble; and this was the song:--\n\n  \"Friends of Honey,\n  Come to Sunny;\n    Whizzing, whirring,\n    Stillness stirring,\n    Sunlight blurring;\n  Friends of Honey,\n  Fly to Sunny!\"\n\nand this she learned by heart before she started.\n\nNow, she travelled a great many days without meeting with any\nadventures at all.  It was such a delightful country that everybody was\npleased to see her, and she never had any difficulty in getting enough\nto eat, for she had only to smile and that was all the payment that\nanybody wanted.  But one day, as she was walking through a wood, a\ngreat change suddenly came over everything.  Every sound was hushed,\nand the birds stopped singing, and the wind stopped playing with the\nleaves; there was not a rustle or a movement anywhere, and the sun had\ngone behind a cloud.  In the whole of her short life the little\nPrincess had never seen the sun go behind a cloud, and she felt\nextremely inclined to cry.  The further she went, the darker and\ngloomier it grew, and at last she could not bear it another minute; so\ndown she sat by the side of the road and wept heartily.\n\n\"Hullo! you must stop that noise or else you will be banished,\" said a\nvoice, not very far on.  Sunny was so astonished that she stopped\ncrying at once and looked up to see a little old man with a white beard\nstaring at her.  He was a very sad-looking little man, and his mouth\nwas drawn down at the corners as though he had been on the point of\ncrying all his life and had never quite broken down.\n\n\"Why must I stop?\" asked Sunny.  \"If you feel unhappy you _must_ cry,\nmust n't you?\"\n\n\"Dear me, no,\" said the sad little man, in a tone of deep gloom.  \"I am\nalways unhappy, but I never cry.  The whole country is unhappy, but\nnobody is allowed to cry.  If you cry, you must go away.\"\n\n\"What a funny country!\" cried Sunny, and she at once began to laugh at\nthe absurdity of it.\n\n\"Don't do that,\" said the little man, in a tone of still greater alarm.\n\"If you go on making any fresh noises, you will get beheaded.  Why\ncan't you be quiet?  You can do anything you like, as long as you do it\nquietly.\"\n\n\"May n't I laugh?\" exclaimed Sunny.  \"What is the use of feeling happy\nif you may n't laugh?\"\n\n\"It is n't any use,\" said the sad little man.  \"Nobody ever is happy in\nthis country.  Nobody ever has been happy since the King was bewitched\nand the sun went away in a temper, and that was sixteen years ago.\nNobody ever will be happy again, unless the spell is broken; and the\nspell cannot be broken until a Princess of the royal blood comes this\nway, without knowing that she is a Princess.\"\n\n\"How absurd!\" said Sunny.  \"As if a Princess could be a Princess\nwithout knowing she is a Princess!\"\n\n\"Why not?\" asked the sad little man, crossly.  He had lived alone in\nthe dark, silent wood for such a long time that he began to find the\nconversation tiring.\n\n\"Oh, because there are bands and flags and balls and banquets and\ncheers and Princes and lots of fun, wherever there is a Princess,\"\nreplied Sunny.\n\nThe sad little man looked more sad than before.\n\n\"Then the spell will never be broken,\" he said, miserably; \"because all\nthat noise would be stopped at once.  If you have done talking you had\nbetter go, or else we shall both be banished; and I advise you to take\noff those wooden shoes of yours, unless you want to be clapped into\nprison.  But, first of all, tell me if you can look straight at the sun\nwithout blinking.\"\n\nHe always asked that of every little girl who came his way, in case she\nshould happen to be a Princess; for he was really a very wise little\nman in spite of his sadness, and he knew that only eagles, and\nPrincesses who did not know they were Princesses, could look straight\nat the sun without blinking.  And he was so tired of feeling sad\nwithout being allowed to cry, that he longed to have the spell removed\nfrom the country, so that he need not keep back his tears any longer.\n\n\"Why, of course I can, if there is a sun,\" laughed Sunny.  And to her\nastonishment the sad little man dropped straight on the ground, and put\nhis fists in his eyes, and began to cry at the very top of his voice,\njust like any child in any nursery.\n\n\"Whatever is the matter?\" exclaimed Sunny.\n\n\"Matter?\" shouted the little man, who was shaken with sobs from head to\nfoot.  \"I was never so happy in my life!  I have been longing to cry\nfor sixteen years.\"\n\nThere had certainly not been so much noise in that wood for sixteen\nyears.  For no sooner did the old man begin to weep, than the trees\nbegan to rustle, and the birds began to sing, and the frogs began to\ncroak; and over it all came a faint glimmering of white light, as\nthough the sun were beginning to stretch himself behind the cloud.\n\n\"What does it all mean?\" demanded Sunny.\n\n\"Go on to the palace and see,\" sobbed the sad little man, and he\npointed out the way to her between his tears.  And Sunny set off\nrunning in her wooden shoes as fast as she could go, and there never\nwas such a clatter as she made when she reached the town and ran\nstraight through the gates and all along the streets; and on either\nside of her the people fell down in heaps, from sheer amazement at\nhearing such a noise after sixteen years of silence.  So nobody tried\nto stop her; and she ran faster and faster and faster, and the light\ngrew brighter and brighter and brighter, till at last she stood in the\ncourtyard of the King's palace.  There she saw beautiful ladies in\nmagnificent court dresses creeping about on their bare feet, and\nhandsome courtiers in elegant costumes walking on tiptoe in carpet\nslippers; and there was the Captain of the King's guard drilling the\nsoldiers in whispers, and there were the soldiers pretending to fire\nwith guns that had no gunpowder in them; and there was the head\ncoachman making faces at the stable boy because he could not shout at\nhim, and there was the stable boy standing on his head because he was\nnot allowed to whistle.  And into the middle of it all came the clatter\nof Sunny's wooden shoes, as she ran across the courtyard, and up the\nsteps, and into the palace; and down dropped the ladies in waiting in\ngraceful groups, and down dropped the courtiers just anyhow; and all\nthe soldiers fell down in neat little rows, and the Captain of the\nKing's guard sat down and looked at them; and the head coachman shouted\nas he had wanted to shout at all his stable boys for the last sixteen\nyears, and the stable boy waved his cap and cried \"Hurrah!\"  And Sunny\nwent clattering along the great hall, past the page boys who were\nplaying marbles with india-rubber marbles, and past the kitchen where\nthe fires burned without crackling and the kettles never boiled over,\nand up the wide marble staircase, and along all the passages, until the\nsound of her coming even reached the King's ears.\n\nNow the King sat on his throne with cotton wool stuffed in his ears, in\ncase there should by accident be the least sound in the palace.  But,\nin spite of that, he heard the clatter of Sunny's shoes coming closer\nand closer, and he began to feel terribly nervous lest there really was\ngoing to be a noise at last.\n\n\"What is that noise?  Take it away and behead it at once!\" he said to\nthe Prime Minister, in his most distinct whisper.  But the noise\noutside was now so great that the Prime Minister could not hear a word;\nand the next moment the door was flung open, and Sunny the Princess ran\ninto the room.  And the King looked so funny as he tried to make the\nPrime Minister hear his whispers, and the Prime Minister looked so\nfunny as he tried to hear the King's whispers, that Sunny was obliged\nto laugh; and when she had once begun she found she could not stop, so\nshe laughed and laughed and laughed; and when the poor, nervous old\nKing turned again to the Prime Minister to tell him to behead some one\nat once, he found that the Prime Minister was laughing too; and\nimmediately all the pages in the hall, and the courtiers in the\ncourtyard, and the cooks in the kitchen, and the townspeople in the\nstreets, and the children in the nurseries, were all laughing as\nheartily as they could.  And when the sun heard all this laughter, he\nfinished making up his mind immediately, and came out from behind the\ncloud and shone his very best once more.  So there was the sunshine\nagain, and there was everybody laughing, except the King.\n\nNow, when the King found that no one was paying any attention to his\nroyal whispers, he began to grow angry, and without thinking any more\nabout it he shouted at the very top of his royal voice.  And this was\nso remarkable, after sixteen years of whispering, that the laughter was\ninstantly hushed; and even Sunny the Princess became grave, because she\nwanted to see what was going to happen next.\n\n\"Who are you?\" demanded the King, pointing at her with his sceptre.\n\n\"I am Sunny, of course,\" she said, stepping up to the throne in quite a\nfriendly manner.  All the courtiers looked at one another and nodded.\n\n\"She is Sunny, of course,\" they said, just as though there could be no\ndoubt about it whatever.\n\n\"She is the little Princess your daughter,\" said a fresh voice from the\ndoorway.  And there stood the Queen, who had not been able to stay by\nherself any longer and had just come after Sunny as fast as she could.\nWhen the King saw her, he quite forgot that she used to laugh too much,\nand he came down from his throne in a terrific hurry and he kissed her\nseveral times before the whole court; and Sunny kissed them both there\nand then; and all the ladies in waiting in the room kissed all the\npages that were to be seen; and the courtiers stood in rows along the\nwall and never got kissed at all.\n\nSo that was how Sunny found out she was a Princess; and there were\nbands and flags and balls and banquets and cheers and Princes and lots\nof fun.  For that evening the King gave a magnificent ball, to\ncelebrate the return of his daughter Sunny; and all the Princes in the\nkingdom were invited to it.\n\n\"Now,\" said the Queen, as she carefully put on Sunny's beautiful new\ncrown, \"you will be able to find your Prince, as you said you would.\"\n\nBut Sunny shook her head and wondered why she felt so sad when\neverything seemed to be going so well; and when the Queen had gone\ndownstairs to look after the supper, she went to the open window and\nlooked out into the garden.  As she did so, there came a faint buzzing\nand humming close at hand, and three beautiful brown bees flew down and\nsettled on her round white arm.  And Sunny gave a cry of joy and knew\nall at once why she had been feeling so lonely; and she began to sing\nthe song Honey the gardener's son had taught her:--\n\n  \"Friends of Honey\n  Come to Sunny;\n    Whizzing, whirring,\n    Stillness stirring,\n    Sunlight blurring;\n  Friends of Honey,\n  Fly to Sunny!\"\n\n\nShe had not nearly finished singing it before there came a distant\nmurmur in the still, warm air, and the murmur grew louder and louder\nuntil it would almost have deafened any one if there had been any one\nthere to deafen.  But the people in the palace were so occupied in\ndressing for the ball that a thunderstorm would not have made any\ndifference to them; and as for Sunny, the sound only reminded her of\nthe village without a name, where she had been so happy with Honey.  So\nshe leaned out of the window as far as she could, and waited until she\nsaw a dense cloud coming gradually towards her, so large that it\ncovered the whole of the setting sun.  When it reached the palace it\nhung just above it, and she could see quite plainly that it was made of\nmillions and millions of bees.  Then the three bees which had dropped\non her round white arm floated up into the air and flew round her head\nthree times and went away to join the cloud of bees overhead.  Sunny\nknew then that they were going to do what she wanted; and she clapped\nher hands and laughed, as the humming and buzzing began all over again,\nand the cloud moved away as quickly as it had come.  \"Hurry, hurry,\ndear little bees!\" she cried from the palace window; and the next\nmoment there was not a bee left in the whole kingdom, for they had all\ngone to the village without a name, in the other King's country.\n\nEverybody wondered why the Princess was so disdainful to all the\nPrinces who danced with her, that night.  But nobody wondered any more\nwhen Honey the gardener's son arrived; and this really happened, only\nthree days later.  And he came, all in his gardener's clothes; and he\nwalked straight into the palace, just as Sunny had done; and she met\nhim in the great hall, where the King and the Queen and the whole court\nwere having a reception to receive one another.  And they both shouted\nwith happiness and ran straight into each other's arms; and they kissed\nand kissed and kissed, and then they fell to talking as fast as they\ncould; and they both talked at once for three quarters of an hour,\nbefore either of them heard a word.  Then they sat down on the steps of\nthe King's throne, just because it happened to be there, and Sunny told\nhim everything that had happened to her.  Nobody interfered, not even\nthe Prime Minister, for Sunny had done so many curious things since her\narrival that one more or less made very little difference.\n\n\"It is very dull being a Princess,\" said Sunny.  \"And I don't like\npalaces much, after all; they are such stuffy places!  The people who\nlive in them are rather stuffy, too.  And there is n't a chocolate tree\nin the whole of the garden; did you ever know such a stupid garden?\nOh, I am so glad you have come, Honey dear!\"\n\n\"Have you found your Prince?\" was all that Honey said.\n\n\"Princes are not a bit amusing,\" said Sunny.  \"There were fifty-two\nPrinces at the ball, the other night, but I did n't like any of them.\nI am dreadfully tired of being a Princess.  It is ever so much nicer in\nthe village, under the chocolate tree.\"\n\n\"Of course it is,\" said Honey.  \"We 'll go back, shall we?\"  And\nnothing the King could say would make them see any other side to the\nquestion.  Indeed, as the Queen pointed out to him, if he had not\nallowed the people to keep so many bees it might never have happened at\nall.  So the end of it was, that the Queen stayed with the King; and\nHoney and Sunny were married that very same day and went back to live\nin the village without a name.  And there they built a very small house\nin a very big garden, and they planted it with rows of chocolate trees,\nand rows of acid-drop bushes, and lots of almond rockeries; and the\nfairies came and filled it with flowers from Fairyland that had no\nnames at all, but were the most beautiful flowers that any one has ever\nseen, for they never faded or died but just changed into something else\nwhen they were tired of being the same flower.\n\nSo no wonder that Honey and Sunny were happy for ever and ever!\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: \"COME WITH ME, POET,\" SAID THE LITTLE PRINCESS]\n\n\n\n\nThe Little Princess and the Poet\n\nThere was once a Poet whom nobody wanted.  Wherever he went, he was\nalways in the way; and the reason for this was his inability to do\nanything useful.  All the people in all the countries through which he\npassed seemed to be occupied in making something,--either war, or\nnoise, or money, or confusion; but the Poet could make nothing except\nlove, and that, of course, was of no use at all.  Even the women, who\nmight otherwise have welcomed him, could not endure the ugliness of his\nfeatures; and, indeed, it would have been difficult to find a face with\nless beauty in it, for he looked as if all the cares and the annoyances\nof the world had been imprinted on his countenance and left it seared\nwith lines.  So the poor, ugly Poet went from place to place, singing\npoems to which nobody listened, and offering sympathy to people who\ncould not even understand his language.\n\nOne day he came to a city he had never visited before; and, as he\nalways did, he went straight to the part where the poorer people lived,\nfor it was all about them that he wrote the poetry to which nobody\nlistened.  But, as usual, the poor people were so full of their\ntroubles that they could not even understand him.\n\n\"What is the use of telling us we are unhappy?\" they grumbled.  \"We\nknow that already, and it does not interest us a bit.  Can you not do\nsomething for us?\"\n\nThe Poet only shook his head.\n\n\"If I did,\" he replied, \"I should probably do it very badly.  The world\nis full of people who are always doing things; the only mistake they\nmake is in generally doing them wrong.  But I am here to persuade them\nto do the right things for a change, so that you may have your chance\nof happiness as well as they.\"\n\n\"Oh, we shall never be happy,\" the people said.  \"If that is all you\nhave to say, you had better leave us to our unhappiness and go up to\nthe King's palace.  For the little Princess has been blind from her\nbirth, and her great delight is to listen to poetry, so the palace is\nfull of poets.  But none of them ever come down here, so we do not know\nwhat they are like.\"\n\nThe Poet was overjoyed at hearing that at last he was in a country\nwhere he was wanted; and he set off for the palace immediately.\n\n\"Who are you, and what do you want?\" demanded the royal sentinels, when\nhe presented himself at the palace gates.\n\n\"I am a Poet,\" he replied.  \"And I have come to see the Princess,\nbecause she is fond of poets.\"\n\n\"We have never seen a poet like you,\" said the sentinels, doubtfully.\n\"All the poets in the palace have smooth, smiling faces, and fine\nclothes, and white hands.  Her Royal Highness is not accustomed to\nreceiving any one so untidy as yourself.\"\n\nThe Poet looked down at his weather-beaten clothes and his toil-worn\nhands; and he stared at the reflection of his wrinkled, furrowed face\nin the moat that surrounded the palace; and he sighed in a disappointed\nmanner.\n\n\"I am a Poet,\" he repeated.  \"How can a man be a poet if his face is\nsmooth and his hands are white?  No man can be a poet if he has not\ntoiled and suffered and wandered over the earth, for the sake of the\npeople who are in it.\"\n\nJust then he heard a woman's voice speaking from the other side of the\ngates; and looking through them, he saw a beautiful, pale Princess,\nstanding there all by herself, with a look of interest on her face.\n\n\"It is the little blind Princess,\" thought the Poet, and he bowed\nstraight to the ground though he knew quite well that she could not see\nhim.  The sentinels saluted, too, for they were so accustomed to\nsaluting people who never saw them at all that the blindness of the\nlittle Princess made no difference to them.\n\n\"Tell me,\" said the Princess, eagerly, \"the name of the man with the\nwonderful voice, who is saying all those beautiful, true things.\"\n\n\"Please your Highness,\" said the sentinels, \"he _says_ he is a Poet.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" cried the little Princess, joyfully, \"at last you have come; I\nhave been waiting for you all my life!  At last I have found a real\nPoet, and the Queen-mother will see now that all those people in there,\nwho say the same things over and over again in their small, thin\nvoices, are not poets at all.  Come in, Poet; why do you stay so long\noutside?\"\n\nSo the drawbridge was let down, and the sentinels saw what a mistake\nthey had made and did their best to pretend that they had not made it\nat all; and for the first time in his life the Poet felt that he was\nnot in anybody's way.\n\n\"Come with me, Poet,\" said the little Princess, holding out her small\nwhite hand to him.  \"If you will take my hand, I shall feel quite sure\nyou are there.\"\n\nSo the little blind Princess and the Poet went into the palace, hand in\nhand.\n\n\"I have found a Poet,\" she announced to the whole court, just as it was\nsitting down to luncheon.\n\n\"What!  Another?\" groaned the King from the top of the table.  \"I\nshould have thought five-and-forty were quite enough, considering the\ndemand.\"\n\n\"This is a _real_ Poet,\" continued the little Princess, still holding\nthe Poet's hand.  \"I knew him by his wonderful voice.  I am so glad he\nhas come; and now, we can send away all the others, who are not poets\nat all.\"\n\nNow, this was a little awkward, for the five-and-forty poets were all\npresent; and being mostly the younger sons of kings, who had only taken\nup poetry as an accomplishment, they were also suitors for the\nPrincess's hand, which made it more awkward still.  So the Queen\ncoughed uncomfortably, and all the ladies in waiting blushed\nuncomfortably, and the five-and-forty poets naturally looked\nuncomfortable into the bargain.  But the little Princess, who could see\nnothing and never had been able to see anything, neither blushed nor\nfelt uncomfortable.\n\n\"Will some one give place to the Poet?\" she asked with a smile.\n\nThe Queen, who was generally full of resources, felt that it was time\nto interfere.\n\n\"Do not listen to Her Royal Highness,\" she said, soothingly, to the\nfive-and-forty poets.  \"She is so terribly truthful that she does not\nknow what she is saying.  I have tried in vain to break her of it.\"\n\n\"Don't know where she gets it from,\" growled the old King, who had a\ngreat dislike to scenes at meal times.\n\nThe five-and-forty poets recovered their composure, when they heard\nthat the Princess was rather to be pitied than blamed; and the Queen\nwas able to turn to the cause of the disturbance.\n\n\"Will you be kind enough to go?\" she said to the Poet.  \"My daughter\ndid not know who you were because, unfortunately, she cannot see.  She\nactually mistook you for a poet!\"\n\n\"It is the first time,\" said the Poet, \"that any one has made the\nmistake.  However, you are quite right and I had better go.  You will\nnot like my poetry; I see five-and-forty gentlemen who can write the\npoetry that will give you pleasure; mine is written for the people, who\nhave to work that you may be happy.  Little lady,\" he added, turning to\nthe Princess, \"I pray you, think no more of me.  As for me, I shall\nlove you to the end of my days.\"\n\nThen he tried to go, but the small, white fingers of the little blind\nPrincess were round his own rough, tanned ones, and he could not move.\n\n\"I loved you before you came,\" she said, smiling.  \"I have been waiting\nfor you all the time.  Why are you in such a hurry to go, if you love\nme?\"\n\nThe listeners grew more scandalised every moment.  No one had seen such\nlove-making before.  To be sure, the five-and-forty poets had written\nlove songs innumerable, but that was not at all the same thing.  Every\none felt that something ought to be done and nobody quite knew how to\ndo it.  Fortunately, the King was hungry.\n\n\"I think you had better say the rest in private, when we have had\nlunch,\" he said grimly, and the courtiers looked immensely relieved,\nand a place was found next to the Princess for the Poet; and the Queen\nand her ladies in waiting proceeded to make conversation, and lunch\nwent on as usual.\n\n\"Now,\" said the King, with a sigh, for meals were of far greater\nimportance to him than poetry, \"you shall tell us one of your poems, so\nthat we may know whether you are a poet or not.\"\n\nThen the Poet stood up and told them one of his poems.  It was about\nthe people who lived on the dark side of the city, and it was very\nfierce, and bitter, and passionate; and when he had finished telling\nit, he expected to be thrust out of the palace and banished from the\ncountry, for that was what usually happened to him.  There was a great\nsilence when he sat down again, and the Poet did not know what to make\nof it.  But the small, white fingers of the little Princess had again\nstolen round his, and that was at least consoling.\n\nThe Queen was the first to break the silence.\n\n\"Charming,\" she said with an effort, \"and so new.\"\n\n\"We have heard nothing like it before,\" said the ladies in waiting.\n\"Are there really such people as that in the world?  It might be\namusing to meet them, or, at least, to study them.\"\n\nThe King glanced at all the other poets and said nothing at all.  And\nthe five-and-forty kings' sons, who, if they were not poets, were at\nleast gentlemen, rose from their seats with one accord.\n\n\"Her royal Highness was quite right,\" they said.  \"We are not poets at\nall.\"\n\nThen they took leave of every one present and filed out of the room and\nrode away to their respective countries, where, of course, nobody ever\nsuspected them of being poets; and they just remained Princes of the\nroyal blood and nothing else to the end of their days.\n\n\"And you, little lady?\" said the Poet, anxiously.\n\n\"It was wonderful,\" answered the little blind Princess.  \"But there was\nno love in it.\"\n\nBy this time the Queen had ceased to be impressed and had begun to\nremember that she was a Queen.\n\n\"We are quite sure you are a poet,\" she said in her most queenly\nmanner, \"because you have told us something that we did not know\nbefore.  But we think you are not a fit companion for her royal\nHighness, and it is therefore time for you to go.\"\n\n\"No, no!\" cried the Princess.  \"You are not to go.  You are my Poet,\nand I want you to stay here always.\"\n\nMatters were becoming serious, and every one set to work to try to turn\nthe little Princess from her purpose.\n\n\"He is shockingly untidy,\" whispered the ladies in waiting.\n\n\"And _so_ ugly,\" murmured the Queen; \"there is nothing distinguished\nabout him at all.\"\n\n\"He will cost the nation something to keep,\" added the King, without\nlowering his voice at all.\n\nBut the little Princess turned a deaf ear to them all and held out her\nhand again to the Poet.\n\n\"I do not believe a word they say,\" she cried.  \"You cannot be ugly,\nyou with a voice like that!  If you are ugly, then ugliness is what I\nhave wanted all my life.  Ugliness is what I love, and you are to stay\nhere with me.\"\n\nIn the end, it was the Poet himself who came to the rescue.\n\n\"I cannot stay with you, little lady,\" he said gently.  \"It is true\nwhat they say; I am too ugly to be tolerated, and it has been my good\nfortune that you could not see me.  I will go away and put some love\ninto my poetry, and then, perhaps, I shall find some one who will\nlisten to me.\"\n\nBut the poor little Princess burst out sobbing.\n\n\"If I could only see,\" she wept, \"I would prove to you that I do not\nthink you ugly.  Oh, if I could only see!  I have never wanted to see\nbefore.\"\n\n\"Little lady,\" whispered the Poet, bending over her, \"_I_ am glad that\nyou cannot see.\"\n\nAnd then, he turned and fled out of the palace and out of the city and\naway from the country that contained the little Princess who had loved\nhim because she was blind.  And he wandered from place to place as\nbefore; but he told no one that he was a poet, for he had felt ashamed\nof his poetry ever since the little Princess had said there was no love\nin it.  But there came a day when he could keep silent no longer, so he\nwent among the people once more and told them one of his poems.  This\ntime, he had no difficulty in making them understand, for he told them\nthe story of his love for the little blind Princess.\n\n\"Why,\" said the people, when he had finished, \"the maid is easily\ncured, for it is well known among our folk that a kiss on the eyelids\nwhen asleep, from a true lover, will open the eyes of any one who has\nbeen blind from birth.\"\n\nNow, when the Poet heard this, he was greatly perplexed.  For to open\nthe eyes of his little Princess was to kill her love for him; and yet,\nhe could not forget how she had wept for the want of her sight, and\nhere was the power to give it back to her, and it rested with him alone\nof all men in the world.  So he determined to make her happy at any\ncost, and he turned his face towards the King's palace once more and\narrived there at midday, after travelling for seven days and seven\nnights without ceasing.  But, of course, that was nothing to a poet who\nwas in love.\n\n\"Dear me,\" said the King irritably, when the Poet appeared before him;\n\"I thought you had gone for good.  And a pretty time we 've been having\nof it with the Princess, in consequence!  What have you come back for?\"\n\n\"I have come back to open the Princess's eyes,\" answered the Poet,\nboldly.\n\n\"It strikes me,\" grumbled the King, \"that you opened everybody's eyes\npretty effectually, last time you were here.  You certainly can't see\nthe Princess now, for she has gone to sleep in the garden.\"\n\n\"That is exactly what I want,\" cried the Poet, joyfully.  \"Let me but\nkiss her eyelids while she is sleeping, and by the time she awakes I\nshall have gone for ever.\"\n\n\"The Queen must deal with this,\" said the King, looking helpless in the\nface of such a preposterous suggestion.  Her Majesty was accordingly\nsent for, and the Poet explained his mission all over again.\n\n\"It is certainly unusual,\" said the Queen, doubtfully, \"not to say out\nof order.  But still, in view of the advantage to be gained, and by\nconsidering it in the light of medical treatment--and if you promise to\ngo away directly after, just like a physician, or--or a\nsinging-master,--perhaps something might be arranged.\"\n\nThe end of it was that the Poet was taken into the garden, and there\nwas the little blind Princess sound asleep in her hammock, with a maid\nof honour fanning her on each side.\n\n\"Hush,\" whispered the Queen.  \"She must not awake, on _any_ account.\"\n\n\"No,\" echoed the poor, ugly Poet; \"she must not awake--on _my_ account.\"\n\nThen he bent over her, for the second time in his life, and touched her\neyelids with his lips.  The Princess went on dreaming happily, but the\nPoet turned and fled out of the city.\n\n\"At least,\" he said, \"she shall never know how ugly I am.\"\n\nThat day, every Prince who was in the palace put on his best court\nsuit, in order to charm the Princess.  But the Princess refused to be\ncharmed.  She looked at them all, with large, frightened eyes, and sent\nthem away, one by one, as they came to offer her their congratulations.\n\n\"Why do you congratulate me on being able to see you?\" she asked them.\n\"Are you so beautiful, then?\"\n\n\"Oh, _no_,\" they said in a chorus.  \"Do not imagine such a thing for a\nmoment.\"\n\n\"Then why should I be glad because I can see you?\" persisted the\nPrincess; and they went away much perplexed.\n\n\"Tell me what is beautiful,\" said the little Princess to her mother.\n\"All my life I have longed to look on beauty, and now it is all so\nconfusing that I cannot tell one thing from another.  Is there anything\nbeautiful here?\"\n\n\"To be sure there is,\" replied the Queen.  \"This room is very beautiful\nto begin with, and the nation is still being taxed to pay for it.\"\n\n\"This room?\" said the Princess in astonishment.  \"How can anything be\nbeautiful that keeps out the sun and the air?  Tell me something else\nthat is beautiful.\"\n\n\"The dresses of the ladies in waiting are very beautiful,\" said the\nQueen.  \"And the ladies in waiting themselves might be called beautiful\nby some, though that of course is a matter of opinion.\"\n\n\"They all look alike to me,\" sighed the little Princess.  \"Is there\nnothing else here that is beautiful?\"\n\n\"Certainly,\" answered the Queen, pointing out the wealthiest and most\neligible Prince in the room.  \"That is the handsomest man you could\never want to see.\"\n\n\"That?\" said the Princess, disconsolately.  \"After all, one is best\nwithout eyes!  Can you not show me some ugliness for a change?  Perhaps\nit may be ugliness that I want to see so badly.\"\n\n\"There is nothing ugly in the palace,\" replied the Queen.  \"When you\nget used to everything you will be able to see how beautiful it all is.\"\n\nBut the Princess sighed and came down from her golden throne and\nwandered out into the garden.  She walked uncertainly, for now that she\nwas no longer blind she did not know where she was going.  And there,\nunder the trees where she had been sleeping a few hours back, stood a\nman with his face buried in his hands.\n\n\"Little lady,\" he stammered, \"I tried to keep away, but--\"\n\nThen the little Princess gave a shout of joy and pulled away his hands\nand looked into his face for a full minute without speaking.  She put\nher small, white fingers into every one of his wrinkles, and she\ntouched every one of his ugly scars, and she drew a deep breath of\nsatisfaction.\n\n\"Just fancy,\" laughed the little Princess to the Poet; \"they have been\ntrying to persuade me in there that all those Princes and people\nare--_beautiful_!\"\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: THE ROCKING-HORSES RUSHED OVER THE GROUND]\n\n\n\n\nThe Wonderful Toymaker\n\nPrincess Petulant sat on the nursery floor and cried.  She was only\neight years old, but she had lived quite long enough to grow extremely\ndiscontented; and the royal household was made very uncomfortable in\nconsequence.\n\n\"I want a new toy,\" sobbed the little Princess.  \"Do you expect me to\ngo on playing with the same toys for ever?  I might just as well not be\na Princess at all!\"\n\nThe whole country was searched in vain for a toy that would be likely\nto please the Princess; but, as she already possessed every kind of toy\nthat has ever been heard of, nobody succeeded in finding her a new one.\nSo the little Princess went on crying bitterly, and the royal nurses\nshook their heads and sighed.  Then the King called a council in\ndespair.\n\n\"It is very absurd,\" grumbled his Majesty, \"that my daughter cannot be\nkept amused.  What is the use of an expensive government and a\nwell-dressed court, if there are not enough toys for her to play with?\nCan no one invent a new toy for the Princess Petulant?\"\n\nHe looked sternly at all his councillors as he spoke; but his\ncouncillors were so horrified at being expected to invent something\nstraight out of their heads that no one said anything at all until the\nPrime Minister summoned up courage to speak.\n\n\"Perhaps, if we were to send for Martin,\" he suggested, \"her royal\nHighness might consent to be comforted.\"\n\n\"Who is Martin?\" demanded the King.\n\n\"He is my son,\" said the Prime Minister, apologetically; \"and he spends\nhis days either dreaming by himself or playing with the Princess\nPetulant.  He will never be Prime Minister,\" he added sadly, \"but he\nmight think of a way to amuse the Princess.\"\n\nSo the King dismissed the council with much relief and sent for Martin\nto come and play with his daughter.  Martin walked straight up to the\nroyal nursery and found the spoilt little Princess still crying on the\nfloor.  So down on the floor sat Martin too; and he looked at her very\nsolemnly out of his round, serious eyes, and he asked her why she was\ncrying.\n\n\"I want a new toy,\" she pouted.  \"I am tired of all my old toys.  Don't\nyou think you can find me a new toy to play with, Martin?\"\n\n\"If I do,\" said Martin, \"will you promise not to be cross when I run\nfaster than you do?\"\n\nThe Princess nodded.\n\n\"And will you promise not to mind when I don't want to play any more?\"\n\nThe Princess nodded again.\n\n\"And will you promise not to call me sulky when I don't feel inclined\nto talk?\" continued Martin.\n\n\"Yes, yes!\"  cried Princess Petulant.  \"You won't be long before you\nfind it, will you, Martin?\"\n\n\"In four weeks from now,\" said the Prime Minister's son, \"you will have\nme with you again.\"\n\n\"And I shall have my new toy,\" said the Princess Petulant, sighing\ncontentedly.\n\nNow, Martin was one of the few children who can see the fairies.  He\nknew how to coax the flower fairies to speak to him, and how to find\nthe wood fairies when they hid among the ferns, and how to laugh back\nwhen the wymps made fun of him; and, above all, he knew how to find his\nway to Bobolink, the Purple Enchanter, who knows everything.  And he\nfound his way to Bobolink, on the evening of that very same day.\n\nBobolink, the Purple Enchanter, sat on his amethyst throne in the\nmiddle of a grove of deadly nightshade.  He was the ugliest enchanter\nany one has ever seen; and on each side of him sat an enormous purple\ntoad with an ugly purple smile on his face.  Even the sun's rays shone\npurple in the home of the Purple Enchanter; and Martin stared at him\nfor a whole minute without speaking.  For, although Martin was two\nyears older than the little Princess Petulant, he was not a very big\nboy for all that; and there was something that made him feel a little\nqueer in the purple face, and the purple hands, and the purple\nexpression of Bobolink.\n\n\"Why don't you say something?\" growled Bobolink, in just the kind of\nvoice one would expect such a very ugly person to have.  \"What are you\nthinking about, eh?  If it's anything about me, you 'd better say so at\nonce!\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Martin, as bravely as he could, \"I was thinking that it\nmust be very odd to be so purple as you are.  Of course,\" he added\npolitely, \"I don't suppose you can help it exactly, because even the\nsun is purple here, and perhaps you have got sunpurpled instead of\nsunburned.\"\n\n\"May I ask,\" said Bobolink, rolling his purple eyes about, \"if you came\nall this way on purpose to make remarks about me?\"\n\n\"No, I did n't,\" explained Martin, hurriedly.  \"I came to ask you the\nway to the Wonderful Toymaker, who makes all the toys for Fairyland.  I\nam going to fetch a new toy for the Princess Petulant.\"\n\n\"And how do you think you are going to get it?\" asked Bobolink, with a\nchuckle.\n\n\"That is exactly what I want you to tell me,\" said Martin, boldly.\n\nNow, Bobolink, the Purple Enchanter, was used to being visited by\npeople who wanted to get something out of him, because, as I said\nbefore, Bobolink knows everything.  But he had never come across any\none who did not begin by flattering him; and he took a fancy to Martin\nfrom the moment he told him he was sunpurpled.  So he smiled as well as\nhe could,--which was not very well, for he had never done such a thing\nbefore and his jaws were extremely stiff,--and for the moment he hardly\nlooked ugly at all.\n\n\"I like you,\" he said, nodding at the small figure of the Prime\nMinister's son; \"and I am going to help you.  Of course, I know quite\nwell where the Wonderful Toymaker lives; but I have promised the pine\ndwarfs not to tell, because it is the only secret they possess, and it\nwould break their hearts if any one were to hear it from me instead of\nfrom them.  You see, when a person knows everything he must keep some\nof it to himself, or else there would be nothing left for anybody else\nto say, and then there would be no more conversation.  That is the\nworst of knowing everything.  But I can show you the way to the pine\ndwarfs; and if you keep perfectly quiet and speak in a whisper to them,\nthey'll tell you all you want to know.\"\n\n\"Why must I keep perfectly quiet and speak in a whisper?\" asked Martin.\n\nBobolink scowled, and became as ugly as ever again.\n\n\"Now you want to know too much, and that is n't fair,\" he complained.\n\"I 'll tell you the way to the pine dwarfs, and you must find out the\nrest for yourself.  Go straight ahead and take the hundred and first\nturning to the right, and the fifty-second turning to the left, then\nturn round seventeen times; and if that is n't good enough for you I\n'll never help you again.  Now, off you go!\"\n\nMartin saw that he was no longer wanted and set off as fast as he\ncould.  It took him a whole week to reach the hundred and first turning\non the right; and it was the most anxious week he had ever spent, for\nhe had to keep counting the turnings all the time and was dreadfully\nafraid of losing count altogether.  And the fifty-second turning on the\nleft was almost as bad, for his way took him through a large town, and\nhe dare not stay to speak to any one for fear of overlooking one of the\nlittle streets.  He left the town behind him at last; and after walking\nfor two days longer, he reached the fifty-second turning on his left,\nand it led him to the middle of a vast sandy plain.\n\n\"How queer!\" thought Martin.  \"Not a single tree to be seen!  Surely\nthe pine dwarfs don't live in a place like this?  Perhaps old Bobolink\nhas only hoaxed me after all.\"\n\nHowever, he turned round seventeen times just to see what would happen;\nand the first thing that happened was that he became remarkably giddy\nand had to sit down on the ground to recover himself.  When he did\nrecover he found he was in a beautiful thick pine wood, with the\nsunshine coming through the branches, and flickering here and there\nover the ground, and painting the great big pine trunks bright red.\nOver it all hung the most delicious silence, only broken by the soft\npassage of the wind through the pine leaves.  Martin had almost\nforgotten the warning Bobolink had given him, but, even if he had quite\nforgotten it, nothing would have induced him to speak loudly in such a\nstillness as that.\n\n\"Are you there, little pine dwarfs?\" he whispered, as he looked up\nthrough the pine trees at the blue sky on the other side.  No sooner\nhad his whisper travelled up through the hushed air than all the\nbranches seemed to be filled with life and movement; and what Martin\nhad believed to be brown pine cones suddenly moved, and ran about among\nthe trees, and slid down the long red trunks.  And then he saw they\nwere dear little brown dwarfs, who surrounded him by hundreds and\nthousands, and travelled up and down his boots, and stared at him with\nlooks full of curiosity.\n\n\"Who are you, little boy, and where do you come from?\" they seemed to\nbe saying; and as they spoke all together their voices sounded exactly\nlike the wind as we hear it in the pine trees.  They were so gentle and\nkind-looking that Martin was not a bit afraid and asked them at once to\ntell him the way to the Wonderful Toymaker who makes all the toys for\nFairyland.  They were delighted to tell him all they knew, for it was\ntheir one secret and they were very proud of it; and so few people ever\ncame that way that they had very few opportunities of telling it.  So\ntheir honest little brown faces were covered with good-nature and\nsmiles, as they crooned out their information.\n\n\"You must walk straight through the wood,\" they said, \"until you come\nto a waterfall at the beginning of a stream; and you must follow the\nstream down, down, down, until it brings you to a valley surrounded by\nhigh hills; and in that valley is the toyshop of the Wonderful\nToymaker, who makes all the toys for Fairyland.\"\n\n\"That is simple enough, I 'm sure,\" said Martin.\n\n\"Ah,\" said the pine dwarfs, wisely, \"but it is not so easy to get there\nas you think; for the stream leads you through the country of the\npeople who make conversation, and they try to stop every stranger who\npasses by, so that they can make him into conversation; and that is why\nso few people ever reach the Wonderful Toymaker at all.\"\n\n\"Make conversation!  How funny!\" said Martin; and he almost laughed\naloud at the idea.\n\n\"It is more sad than funny,\" said the pine dwarfs, sighing like a large\ngust of wind that for the moment made Martin feel quite chilly; \"for it\ngives _us_ so much to do.  You see, they make conversation, and we make\nsilence; and the more conversation they make the more silence we have\nto make to keep things even.  They are always ahead of us, for all\nthat!\"  They sighed again.  Martin looked puzzled.\n\n\"Still, your silence is so full of sound,\" he said.  The pine dwarfs\nlaughed softly, so softly that most people would have called it only\nsmiling.\n\n\"Real silence, the best kind, is always full of sound; and of course we\nonly make the very best kind,\" they explained proudly.  \"Anybody can\nmake the other kind of silence by taking the air and sifting out the\nnoise in it.  Now, _we_ take the air, and when we have sifted out the\nnoise we fill it with sound.  That's a very different thing.  The worst\nof it is,\" they added, sadly, \"there is so little demand for real\nsilence.  We have layers of it piled up at the top, of those pine\ntrees, and nobody ever wants it.  The other silence is so much cheaper,\nyou see, and most people don't know the difference.\"\n\n\"When I am grown up and have a house of my own,\" said Martin, \"I shall\ncome and ask you to fill it with the very best silence for me.\"\n\nThe pine dwarfs shook their little brown heads incredulously.\n\n\"Wait till you are grown up,\" they said; \"and then, if you will let us\nfill one room for you, we shall be quite satisfied.  Now, set off on\nyour journey; and if you want to escape being made into conversation,\nyou must not speak a single word until you reach the valley where the\nWonderful Toymaker lives.\"\n\n\"Trust me!\" laughed Martin.  \"It is only talking that is difficult; any\none can keep silent.\"\n\n\"Very well; be careful, only be careful!\" they sighed; and in another\nmoment they had all gone back to their pine trees, and nothing was to\nbe heard except the distant sounds with which they were filling the\nsilence.\n\nThen Martin walked on until he came to the rushing waterfall; and along\nby the side of the stream he trudged and thought it was the very\nnoisiest stream he had ever come across, for it clattered over the\nstones, and splashed up in the air, and seemed bent on getting through\nlife with as much fuss and excitement as it was possible to make.  As\nhe walked along by its side, he discovered that the noise it made was\ncaused by millions of little voices, chattering and gossiping,\nquarrelling and laughing, as busily as they could.\n\n\"This must be the country where they make conversation,\" thought\nMartin.  \"Well, I must be pretty careful not to let them know I can\ntalk.\"  At the same time, the longer he walked by that talkative little\nstream the easier it was to forget the silence in the pine wood; and he\nbegan to think that, after all, one silent room would be quite enough\nin the house he was going to have some day.  Presently, there were not\nonly voices in the stream beside him but all around him as well, in the\ntrees, and the flowers, and the grass, and the air; and they were not\nthe pretty little voices of the fairies which he knew so well, but they\nwere the harsh, shrill, unpleasant voices of unpleasant people, who\nmust have spent their lives in chattering about things that did not\nconcern them.  Then the voices came closer and closer to him, and\nbuzzed up round his head, and shrieked into his ears, asking him dozens\nand dozens of questions, until it was all he could do not to shout at\nthem to leave him alone.\n\n\"Who are you?  Where do you come from?  What do you want?  Where are\nyou going?  What are you doing here?  Why don't you answer?  How did\nyou get here?  Whom did you meet on the way?  Did they tell you\nanything interesting?  What is your name?  How old are you?  Who is\nyour father?  What is your mother like?  Does she give parties?  Does\nshe invite many people?  Do you know the King?  Have you been to court?\nDoes the Queen dress well?  Do you like jam or cake best?  What is your\nfavourite sweet?  Don't you think we are very amusing?\" etc., etc., etc.\n\nThese were only a few of the questions they asked Martin, but they\nquite cured him of any wish to speak; and, instead of telling them\nanything about himself, he just put his hands over his ears and ran as\nfast as he could until he dropped down, very much out of breath, some\nway further along the stream.  As he sat there, delighted at having\nescaped from all those impertinent voices, a curious little fish with a\nbent back popped his head above the water and nodded to him.\n\n\"Good morning,\" said the fish.  His tone was so friendly that Martin\nforgot all about the warning of the pine dwarfs, and entered into\nconversation with him.\n\n\"This is a strange country,\" said Martin.\n\n\"It's a very busy country,\" answered the fish.  \"None of us get left\nalone for long; and as for me, I never get any peace at all.  If I\ncould only get my tail into my mouth, things would be very different.\"\n\n\"You look as though you had been trying a good deal,\" observed Martin.\n\"I suppose that is why your back is so bent.\"\n\n\"Bent?\" cried the fish, angrily.  \"Nothing of the sort!  On the\ncontrary, it has a most elegant curve.  It's not the shape I complain\nabout, it's the difference in the work.  You see, if I could only get\nmy tail into my mouth I should be a Full-stop; and Full-stops have so\nlittle to do nowadays that I should be able to retire at once.  Being a\nComma is quite another matter; it's work, work, work, from year's end\nto year's end.  Hullo!  What is it now?\"\n\nHis last remark was addressed to another fish, who seemed to have\nsucceeded in getting his tail into his mouth, and who spoke very\nhuskily in consequence.\n\n\"Come along,\" he said to the Comma-fish; \"you 've got to help me to\nmake a Semi-colon.\"\n\n\"Oh, dear, oh, dear!\" replied the other.  \"I do wish Colons were more\nused; it would at least give me a rest and use up some of you\nFull-stops for a change.\"\n\nMartin was just going to sympathise with the poor little overworked\nComma-fish, when the storm of voices he had left behind suddenly\nmanaged to overtake him; and there they were once more, buzzing round\nhis head and shrieking in his ears, until he was almost deafened by the\nnoise; while dozens of invisible hands were lifting him from the ground\nand carrying him along at a terrific pace.\n\n\"He has spoken, he has spoken!\" the voices were shouting triumphantly,\nas they bore him along.  \"He is ours to make conversation of!\"\n\nThen they took him into a magnificent glittering palace, made of glass\nof a thousand colours; and invisible voices told him it was all his and\nhe should be king over it, if he would only make conversation for them.\nIt was the most beautiful palace a king could possibly have wished for;\nand even the Prime Minister's son was dazzled by it for the moment.\nThere was everything in it that a boy could want; if he pulled a golden\ncord, down fell a shower of chocolate creams; if he went to the\nstrawberry ice room, there was a wooden spade for him to dig it out\nwith, and a wheelbarrow in which to bring it away; if he wanted a\npresent, he had only to turn on the present-tap and out came whatever\nhe wished for.  So he immediately wished for a six-bladed knife, a real\npony, and a gold watch.  For all that, he was not a bit happy.  The\nincessant talking around him never ceased for a moment; the air seemed\npacked with people whom he never saw, but who asked him innumerable\nquestions which he never attempted to answer.  Besides this, all the\nfurniture talked as well.  When he opened the door it made remarks\nabout the way he did it, which were not at all polite.  If he sat on\nthe arm of a chair, it pointed out to him in a hurt tone that chairs\nwere not intended to be used in that way.  When he cut his name on the\nmahogany dining-table, it shouted abuse at him until he had to paint\nover the letters to appease it.  The windows chatted pleasantly about\nthe weather when the wind blew, instead of rattling; and the fires\ngossiped when they were lighted, instead of crackling and smoking.  He\ngave up riding his pony after it had told him the history of its\nchildhood for the fifteenth time; and when he found that his gold watch\nwas always telling stories instead of telling the time he had to get\nrid of that too.  As for his six-bladed knife, it wearied him so much\nby telling him the same thing six times over that he threw it out of\nthe window as far as he could.  All this was excessively trying to a\nboy who had never talked much in the whole of his life; and the worst\nof it was that he was prevented by magic from running away; so the four\nweeks came to an end, and he had not found a new toy for the Princess\nPetulant.\n\nMeanwhile, the little Princess had been waiting, and waiting, and\nwaiting.  In all the eight years of her life she had never waited so\npatiently for anything; and the affairs of the country went on quite\nsmoothly in consequence.  When, however, the four weeks were over and\nMartin did not return with her new toy, Princess Petulant grew tired of\nbeing good, and, once more, she lay on the nursery floor and sobbed;\nand, once more, there was consternation in the royal household.  So the\nKing called another council.\n\n\"Haven't you got any more sons?\" he demanded crossly of the Prime\nMinister.  The Prime Minister shook his head, and owned sadly that he\nhad only one son.\n\n\"Then why do you lose him?\" said the King, still more crossly.  \"Does\nno one know where the Prime Minister's son has gone?\"\n\nThe councillors looked helplessly at one another.  One thought that\nMartin had gone to Fairyland; another said it was to Toyland; and a\nthird declared he must be with the wymps at the back of the sun.  But,\nas nobody knew how to get to any of these places, the suggestions of\nhis councillors only made the King more annoyed than before.  At last,\nhe asked the Queen's advice; and the Queen proposed that the little\nPrincess should attend the council and explain why she was crying.\nHowever, when they sent up to the royal nursery for the Princess\nPetulant, there was no Princess to be seen; and the royal nurses were\nrushing everywhere in great confusion, trying to find her.\n\n\"It is a most extraordinary thing,\" cried the King, \"that we cannot\nkeep anybody in the place!  What is the use of children who do nothing\nbut lose themselves?  There must be wympcraft in this!\"\n\nThe Queen only said \"Poor children!\" and set to work to have the\ncountry searched for the missing pair, and sat down to cry by herself\nuntil they could be found.\n\nWhat had really happened was quite simple.  While the Princess Petulant\nwas sobbing on the nursery floor, something came through the open\nwindow and dropped with a thud just in front of her.  This astonished\nher so much, that she stopped crying and looked up to see what it was.\nThere stood a little pine dwarf, holding his hands to his ears.\n\n\"Dear, dear!\" crooned the pine dwarf in his soft voice.  \"What are you\nmaking such a noise for?\"\n\n\"I am crying because Martin has not come back,\" said the Princess,\nsorrowfully.  \"He promised to fetch me a new toy, and he has never\nbroken his promise before.  I do wish he would come back.  Even if he\ndoes n't bring me a new toy, I wish he would come back.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" said the pine dwarf, smiling, \"now I think I can help you.  But\nyou must not cry any more; it is almost as bad as the noise they are\nmaking in the country where Martin is imprisoned.\"\n\n\"Oh!\" cried Princess Petulant, clapping her hands; \"do you _really_\nknow where Martin is?\"\n\n\"Come along with me and see,\" said the pine dwarf.  The next thing the\nPrincess knew was that she was gliding through the air in the most\ndelicious manner possible; and she never stopped until she found\nherself by the side of the waterfall, that stands at the edge of the\ncountry where they make conversation.\n\n\"I cannot take you any further,\" said the pine dwarf; \"because there is\nso much noise down there that it would blow me into little pieces at\nonce.  Follow the stream along until it brings you to a glass palace,\nand there you will find Martin waiting for you.  Whatever you do,\nthough, you must not speak a word to any one until you find him.  Do\nyou think you can do this?\"\n\nThe Princess was thoughtful for a whole minute.\n\n\"I can do it if I stop up my ears with cotton wool,\" she said.  \"I am\nquite certain I should speak if I heard any one talking to me.\"\n\nThe pine dwarf smiled again; and a linnet, who had overheard their\nconversation, kindly offered the Princess a piece of cotton wool from\nthe nest he was making; and she thanked him as charmingly as a Princess\nshould, and immediately stuffed it into her two little pink ears.  Then\nshe kissed her hand to the good little pine dwarf, and ran away along\nthe stream; and she never stopped running until she reached the\nmagnificent, glittering glass palace; and there she saw Martin right in\nthe middle of it, sitting at the table with his head in his hands.\n\n\"I do believe he is crying!\" thought Princess Petulant; and she very\nnearly cried too at the mere thought of it, for no one had ever seen\nthe Prime Minister's son cry before.  She picked up a stone instead,\nhowever, and sent it right through the glass wall of the palace,--for\nshe was in far too great a hurry to go round to the door,--and she made\na hole large enough to slip through; and into the room she bounded,\nwhere Martin sat thinking about her.\n\nThey kissed each other a great many times; and Martin pulled the cotton\nwool out of her two little pink ears, and told her all that had\nhappened, and how miserable he had been because he could not keep his\npromise to her, and how dreadfully tired he was of conversation.\n\n\"Even now,\" he added, sadly, \"I don't suppose they will let me go with\nyou.  Just listen to their stupid voices!  I shall have to bear that\nfor the rest of my life.\"\n\n\"Oh, no, you won't!\" buzzed the voices in the air.  \"You can go away as\nsoon as you like.  It is quite hopeless to think of making you into\nconversation; you are the most unconversational prisoner we have ever\ncaptured.  If the Princess had not put cotton wool in her ears we\nshould have caught her directly; and what splendid conversation she\nwould have made!  Unfortunately, she is out of our power now, because\nshe reached you without speaking a word; so you can go off together as\nsoon as you like.\"\n\nThey did not wait to be told twice, but set off at once, hand in hand,\nand walked straight on until they reached the top of the hill that\nslopes down into the valley where the Wonderful Toymaker lives.  Then\nthey ran a race down the side of the hill; and of course Martin allowed\nthe Princess to win, so she was the first, after all, to see the most\nwonderful toyshop in the world.  It was so wonderful that she actually\nremained speechless with astonishment, until Martin caught her up; and\nthen they stood side by side and stared at it.\n\nTo begin with, it was not a toyshop at all.  The whole of the valley\nwas strewn with toys: they lay on the ground in heaps, they were piled\nhigh up on the rocks, they hung from the trees and made them look like\nhuge Christmas trees, and they covered the bushes like blossoms:\nwherever the children looked, they saw toys, toys, toys.  And such\ntoys, too!  People who have never been to Fairyland can have no idea of\nthe toys that are made by the Wonderful Toymaker; even Martin, who was\na friend of the fairies, had never seen anything like them before.  As\nfor the Princess Petulant--her large blue eyes were open, and her\nlittle round mouth was open, and she could not have spoken a word to\nplease anybody.\n\nThen, suddenly, into the middle of it all stepped the Wonderful\nToymaker.  Any one who has lived for thousands and thousands of years\nmight reasonably be expected to look old, but the Wonderful Toymaker\nlooked young enough to play with his own toys; when he laughed, the\nchildren felt that they should never feel unhappy again; and when he\ncame running towards them, turning coach-wheels on the way, they felt\ncertain that he was only a very little older than themselves.  For that\nis what happens when a man has been making toys for thousands and\nthousands of years.\n\n\"My dear children, how pleased I am to see you!\" he cried joyfully.\n\"At last, I shall have some one to play with!  Come and look at my two\nnew tops.\"\n\nHe took them by the hands and raced them across the valley to his\nworkshop, which was strewn with gold and silver tools with handles made\nof rubies; and he took up a gaily painted top and set it spinning by\nblowing gently upon it three times.  As it spun it began to hum a tune,\nand in the tune they could hear every sound that the world\ncontains,--birds singing and wind whistling, children laughing and\nchildren crying, people talking and people quarrelling, pretty sounds\nand ugly sounds, one after another, until the children were spellbound\nwith astonishment.\n\n\"Oh, oh!\" cried Princess Petulant, as the top rolled over on its side.\n\"I never heard anything so beautiful before.\"\n\n\"The top is yours, since you like it,\" said the Wonderful Toymaker,\nhanding it to her with a bow.  \"Now listen to my other new top.\"\n\nThen he took up another one, made of burnished copper, and gave it a\ntwist with his fingers, and it began to spin with all its might; and as\nit spun round, the song it sang was one that could never be described,\nfor it was full of the sounds that do not exist at all, the sounds that\nare only to be heard in Fairyland when we are lucky enough to go there.\nIt made the Princess Petulant feel sleepy; but Martin gave a shout of\npleasure when it stopped spinning.\n\n\"I like that one much better,\" he said.\n\n\"It is the finest toy I have ever made,\" said the Wonderful Toymaker;\n\"and it is yours because you know how to appreciate it.  Now, we will\nplay games!\"\n\nThey had never played such games in their lives before, nor had they\never had such a delightful playfellow.  He put such feelings of joy and\nhappiness into their hearts that the little Princess wondered how she\ncould ever have felt discontented, and Martin never once wanted to stop\nand dream.  They played with toys that would not break, however badly\nthey were treated; they chased one another over the rocks and through\nthe bushes, without getting out of breath at all; and when they could\nnot think of anything else to do, they laughed and laughed and laughed\nand laughed.  Then they sat down on the grass to rest; and the\nWonderful Toymaker sat between them and smiled at them both.\n\n\"Now, we will refresh ourselves by eating unwholesome sweets,\" he said,\nand he gave a long low whistle.  Immediately, they were pelted from all\nsides by the most delicious, unwholesome sweets that were ever made;\nbut, although they were ever so unwholesome, and although the children\nate quantities and quantities of them, they were not in the least bit\nthe worse for it; and when they had eaten all they could, the Wonderful\nToymaker filled their pockets for them, and laughed again.\n\n\"Won't you stop here always?\" he asked them.\n\nThe children shook their heads.\n\n\"I must go back to mother,\" said the Princess Petulant.  \"She must be\nwondering where I am, now.\"\n\n\"And I have got to be Prime Minister, some day,\" said Martin, with a\nsigh.\n\n\"You will never be Prime Minister,\" said the Toymaker, just as his\nfather was always saying.  \"Why can't you both stay with me?  Only\nthink of all the games we can have, and the toys we can make, and the\nunwholesome sweets we can eat!  Won't you really stay and play with me?\"\n\nHowever, when he saw that they were quite determined to go home, he\nmade the best of it and asked them whether they would like to go by\nsea, or by sky, or by land.  Martin wanted to go by sky, but when the\nPrincess said she would much prefer to go by land as she had come most\nof the way by sky, the Prime Minister's son gave in at once and said\nthat he had meant to choose the land road all the time.  So the\nToymaker fetched two beautiful rocking-horses and helped the children\nto mount them, and said he should never forget their visit for the rest\nof his life.  He could not have said more than that, for of course he\nhas been living ever since.\n\nSo they rode out of the valley and up the hill-side, and they waved\ntheir hands to the Wonderful Toymaker who stood looking disconsolately\nafter them, and they wished they could have played with him just a\nlittle longer.  They had very little time even to wish, however, for\nthe rocking-horses rushed over the ground at such a pace that they\ncould see nothing they were passing; so, after all, they would have\nbeen none the wiser if they had come by sky as Martin had wished.  Then\nthe townspeople came out of their houses and stared with amazement, as\nthey saw their King's daughter and their Prime Minister's son racing\npast them on wooden horses; but they had no time, either, to make\nremarks on the matter before the children were out of sight again, for\nthe wooden horses never stopped until they brought their riders to the\npalace gates; and then they disappeared and left Martin and the\nPrincess Petulant knocking for admission.\n\nThen there was a hullabaloo!  The Queen dried her tears and hugged them\nboth, one after another; and the King dismissed the council which had\nnot helped him in the least; and the Prime Minister was more convinced\nthan ever that his son would never be Prime Minister; and the two\nchildren span their tops before the whole court and told the story of\ntheir adventures.  And it was at once written down, word for word, by\nthe Royal Historian, and that is how it has got inside this book.\n\nThe two children never visited the Wonderful Toymaker again; and Martin\nnever became Prime Minister.  One day he became King instead; and it\nwas all because he married the Princess Petulant the moment he was\ngrown up.  They thoroughly enjoyed life for the rest of their days, and\nso did everybody else in the kingdom, down to the Prime Minister and\nthe Royal Historian; and this was all because they never lost the\nwonderful tops which had been given them by the Wonderful Toymaker.\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: HE CURLED HIMSELF UP IN THE SUN AND CLOSED HIS EYES]\n\n\n\n\nThe Professor of Practical Jokes\n\nYears and years and years ago, in a country that has been long\nforgotten, there lived a king called Grumbelo.  In spite of his\nextremely ugly name, which was certainly no fault of his, he was young,\nhandsome, and talented; and this made it all the more remarkable that\nhe had never thought of seeking a wife.  He ruled his country so well\nthat not a single poor or ill-treated person was to be found in the\nwhole of it; and yet, it was the dullest country that has ever existed.\nThe reason for this was plain; the King was all very well in his way,\nand to be well-governed no doubt has its advantages, but the people\nwere unreasonable and they wanted more than this.  They wanted court\nballs, and court banquets, and royal processions through the streets,\nwith bands playing and flags flying; they wanted more play, and more\nholidays, and more fun; and all these things, as every one knows well,\nare only to be had when there is a Queen at court.  The King, however,\nwas so well satisfied with himself that it never occurred to him how\ndreadfully dull his kingdom was growing; and he was exceedingly\nsurprised when a number of the courtiers, headed by the Royal\nComptroller of Whole Holidays and the learned Professor of Practical\nJokes,--who had been positively out of work ever since his serious\nyoung Majesty came to the throne,--waited upon him one morning, with\nthe humble request that he should begin to think about finding a Queen.\n\n\"What more can you want?\" asked the young King in astonishment.\n\"Surely a King, or at least a King such as I am, is enough for my\nsubjects!  I am quite satisfied with myself: is it possible that the\ncountry is not equally satisfied?\"\n\n\"The country is more than satisfied with your excellent Majesty,\"\nexplained the Comptroller of Whole Holidays.  \"The country has never\nbeen so admirably governed before.  It feels, however, that certain\nother things are almost as important, your Majesty, as wise laws and\nhonest toil; such as--such as whole holidays, for instance.\"\n\n\"And practical jokes,\" murmured the learned Professor at his side.\n\nHis Majesty was silent.  It seemed incredible that the country should\nwant anything more than the excellent government of King Grumbelo; but\nhe was fond of his people at heart,--in spite of the dulness to which\nhe had brought them, and so he consented in the end to give them a\nQueen.\n\n\"Go and find me the most beautiful, the most silent, and the most\nfoolish Princess in the world,\" he said to them.  \"She must be the most\nbeautiful because I shall have to look at her, and the most silent\nbecause I am able to talk for both of us, and the most foolish because\nI can be wise for her as well as for myself.  If you find me a Princess\nlike this I will make her my Queen.\"\n\nNot long after, the King held a reception for all the beautiful\nPrincesses who could be collected at such a very short notice.  There\nwere a hundred and fifty altogether; but although they were without\ndoubt both beautiful and foolish, they never stopped talking for an\ninstant, and not one of them would King Grumbelo have for his Queen.\nSo the Royal Comptroller of Whole Holidays and the learned Professor of\nPractical Jokes put their heads together once more, and in a few days'\ntime they came again to the King.\n\n\"We have heard at last of the Princess who would suit you,\" they said\nto him.  \"She is so beautiful that the trees stop gossiping and the\nflowers stop breathing when she passes by; and she is so silent that if\nit were not for the wonderful expression in her eyes it would be\nimpossible to hold any conversation with her at all.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" said King Grumbelo, nodding his royal head approvingly; \"and is\nshe very foolish as well?\"\n\n\"That she must be, your Majesty,\" said the Comptroller of Whole\nHolidays, looking nervously towards the Professor of Practical Jokes,\n\"because, your Majesty,--well, because--\"\n\n\"Because she has refused to have anything to do with your Majesty,\"\nboldly interrupted the Professor.\n\n\"What?\" cried the King, astounded.  \"She does not _wish_ to be my\nQueen?\"\n\n\"Not exactly that, your Majesty,\" stammered the Comptroller of Whole\nHolidays; \"but she declares she could never marry any one who--who--\"\n\n\"Who has so ridiculous a name as your Majesty!\" said the Professor of\nPractical Jokes without a moment's hesitation.\n\nKing Grumbelo stepped down from his throne and merely smiled.\n\n\"That is of no consequence,\" he observed.  \"Evidently she knows nothing\nabout me except my unfortunate name, and that I certainly did not give\nmyself.  Tell me at once where this wonderful Princess is to be found.\"\n\n\"That is exactly what we do not know, your Majesty,\" they confessed,\nreluctantly.  \"As soon as the Princess heard that your Majesty wished\nto make her a Queen she fled from the country, and we have not been\nable to discover where she has hidden herself!\"\n\n\"No matter,\" said King Grumbelo, actually omitting to scold them for\ntheir stupidity; \"it is never difficult to find the most beautiful\nPrincess in the world!  Bring me my horse at once; you can make ready\nfor the royal wedding as soon as you please.\"\n\nThe country was very badly governed while the King was away; but it was\ncertainly not dull.  Every person in the kingdom was occupied in making\npreparations for the royal wedding, and it was going to be such a\nparticularly grand royal wedding that the people were kept thoroughly\namused by looking forward to it alone.  When, however, the last touch\nhad been put to the preparations, and there was positively nothing left\nfor any one to do, the people began to grumble.  It was clear that\nthere could not be a marriage if nobody was there to be married, and no\ntidings had been received of King Grumbelo since he rode away to fetch\nhis bride.  There is no doubt that the discontent of the people would\nhave ended in a revolution if the Professor of Practical Jokes had not\nhit upon a happy idea.  \"It is true that we cannot have a royal\nwedding,\" said the Professor of Practical Jokes; \"but we can pretend to\nhave one.\"\n\nThe Comptroller of Whole Holidays was only too delighted to fall in\nwith the idea, and at once issued a proclamation to the effect that the\ncountry should take a whole holiday until further notice.  After that,\nthe people could not think of grumbling; they gave themselves up to\ngeneral rejoicing, and pretended, day after day, that the King was\nbeing married, until they almost forgot that there was not even a king\nin the country.\n\nMeanwhile, King Grumbelo was riding by night and by day in search of\nhis beautiful, silent Princess.  He rode for many months without\ndiscovering a trace of her; but instead of growing tired of his search\nhe only became the more anxious to find her.  One day, as he was riding\nthrough a wood, he came upon a sweet-smelling hedge, all made of\nhoneysuckle and sweet-briar, so high that he could not climb it, and so\nthick that he could not see through it.\n\n\"Dear me!\" thought King Grumbelo, \"something charming must be hidden\nbehind so pretty a hedge as this!\"  He rode along it with his mind full\nof curiosity until he came to two slender, pink-and-white gates, made\nentirely of apple-blossom; and through these he could see a\nfresh-looking garden with green lawns and gravel paths and bright\nflower-beds, and in the middle of it all a dainty little house made of\nnothing but rose leaves.  The King was so impatient to know who was the\nowner of such a delightful little dwelling that he knocked at once on\nthe gates for admission; and a dragon with a singularly mild and\nharmless expression appeared inside, and asked him gently what he\nwanted.  The King looked at him in surprise; for, although he was\ndecidedly small for a dragon, he was certainly much too large and too\nclumsy to live in a house made entirely of rose leaves.\n\n\"Can you tell me who lives here?\" asked King Grumbelo, politely; for,\nas every one knows, it is always wise to be polite to a dragon however\nsmall he may be.\n\n\"Oh, yes,\" answered the dragon, with a wave of his tail towards the\nhouse and the garden; \"I live here.\"\n\n\"Nonsense!\" said the King, forgetting in his surprise to be polite.\n\"You could not possibly live in so small a house as that!\"\n\n\"If you want to know who lives inside the house you should say so,\"\nanswered the dragon, in an injured tone.  \"It is n't likely that a\nwell-bred dragon would live inside anything.  You should be more\ncareful in the way you express yourself.\"\n\n\"Well, well,\" said the King, impatiently, \"perhaps you can tell me to\nwhom the house belongs?\"\n\n\"No, I can't,\" answered the dragon, with a smile; \"because it does n't\nbelong to anybody, you see.  It is here because it is wanted, and when\nit is n't wanted any longer it will cease to be here.\"\n\n\"What a curious house!\" exclaimed the King.\n\n\"Curious?  Not at all!\" said the dragon, looking injured again.  \"It\nwould be much more curious if it were to remain here when it was n't\nwanted.  You should n't make needless remarks.\"\n\nIf King Grumbelo had not been so anxious to find out who did live\ninside the house he would certainly have ridden away, there and then;\nbut the more he looked at the beautiful garden and the charming little\ndwelling of rose leaves, the more he longed for an answer to his\nquestion.  So he kept his temper with difficulty, and turned once more\nto the aggravating dragon.\n\n\"Does anybody live inside the house?\" he asked.\n\n\"Of course,\" answered the dragon.  \"Do they build houses in your\ncountry to be looked at?  I suppose you can't help it, but I have never\nbeen asked so many senseless questions before.\"\n\n\"Answer me one more and I will go away,\" said King Grumbelo.  \"Does a\nbeautiful Princess, the most beautiful you have ever seen, live inside\nthe house over there?\"\n\n\"There is no Princess in the place, be assured of that,\" answered the\ndragon, emphatically.  \"I should not be here if there were; it is a\nthankless task to keep guard over a Princess; it means nothing but\nspells and fighting and unpleasantness, and in the end the Princess\ncomplains that you have kept the right people away.  Oh, no, nothing\nwould induce me to take another place with a Princess.  We 've nothing\nof _that_ kind here.\"\n\n\"Then I 'll bid you good-day,\" said King Grumbelo, for he did not mean\nto waste any more time.  Just as he was going to ride away, however,\nthe door of the little house opened, and out of it stepped the\nsweetest-looking little lady the world has ever contained.  She was so\nbeautiful that as she walked down the path the flowers stopped\nbreathing and the trees stopped gossiping; and she had such wonderful\neyes that to look at them was to know everything she was thinking\nabout.  She glanced once at the King as he stood outside the gates of\napple-blossom, and then she turned aside without speaking a word and\npassed out of sight among the flower-beds.  Then the King knew that his\nsearch was over; she was beautiful and silent enough to please him,\nwhether she were foolish or not; and he made up his mind on the spot\nnot to search any more for the disdainful Princess who had run away\nfrom him.\n\n\"Who is she?\" he asked the dragon, eagerly.\n\n\"The Lady Whimsical, to be sure,\" answered the dragon.  \"What a lot of\nquestions you ask!\"\n\n\"Then go and tell the Lady Whimsical that if she pleases I would like\nto speak with her,\" said King Grumbelo.\n\nThe dragon did not move.\n\n\"The Lady Whimsical never speaks,\" he observed.  \"It would really be\nmuch wiser if you were to go away.\"\n\n\"I am not going away,\" shouted the King, growing angry.  \"Go and ask\nher at once if she will receive me, or I will put you out of the way\nfor good and all!\"\n\n\"Very well,\" said the dragon, sighing; \"I suppose I must.  What name?\"\n\n\"King Grumbelo,\" answered the King, proudly.\n\nHe fully expected that the dragon would fall flat on the ground at the\nmention of such an important name as his; but the dragon did nothing of\nthe kind.\n\n\"It is not a bit of use expecting to come in here with a name like\nthat,\" he complained.  \"The Lady Whimsical cannot bear anything ugly,\nand she has a particular horror of ugly names.  I have strict orders\nnever to mention an ugly name in her presence.  You had really better\ngo away.\"\n\n\"I am not going away,\" shouted the King once more.  \"Go and tell the\nLady Whimsical that a great King, who has heard how charming and how\ngracious she is, would like to make himself known to her.\"\n\nThe dragon consented unwillingly to take this message, and ambled\nclumsily away among the flower-beds.  When he came back, he found the\nKing pacing restlessly up and down.\n\n\"Can't you keep still?\" growled the dragon.  \"Your ridiculous name is\nenough to make any one giddy without--\"\n\n\"What did the Lady Whimsical say?\" interrupted King Grumbelo,\nimpatiently.\n\n\"The Lady Whimsical never says,\" answered the dragon drowsily, as he\ncurled himself up in the sun and closed his eyes; \"but she will allow\nyou to look at her for five minutes every morning, at two hours after\nsunrise.\"\n\nTwo hours after sunrise on the following morning, King Grumbelo was\naccordingly admitted into the garden beyond the pink-and-white gates of\napple-blossom.  There sat the Lady Whimsical on the doorstep of her\nrose-leaf dwelling, and in front of her stood the King.\n\n\"You are the most charming person I have ever seen,\" declared the King.\n\nThe Lady Whimsical smiled.\n\n\"I never thought I should find any one so charming as you are,\" said\nthe King.\n\nThe Lady Whimsical smiled again.\n\n\"Nor so silent,\" continued the King.\n\nThe Lady Whimsical smiled for the third time.\n\n\"Nor so--\" began the King, and then he paused, for he thought she might\npossibly object to being called foolish, though foolish she undoubtedly\nwas if she did not wish him to stay longer than five minutes.  As he\nhesitated, the Lady Whimsical burst out laughing and ran inside her\nlittle house of rose leaves, and banged the door in his face.\n\n\"Time's up,\" said the dragon, and King Grumbelo went away puzzled.  He\ncame back again, however, at the same time on the following morning;\nand there sat Lady Whimsical on the doorstep of her rose-leaf dwelling,\njust as though she were expecting him.\n\n\"I have thought only of you since yesterday morning,\" sighed King\nGrumbelo.\n\nThe Lady Whimsical smiled as before.\n\n\"I shall think only of you for the rest of my days,\" declared the King.\n\nThe Lady Whimsical smiled even more than before.\n\n\"Do you know why I have come all this way to find you?\" demanded the\nKing, growing bolder.\n\nThe Lady Whimsical shook her head at him, burst out laughing, and ran\ninside her rose-leaf house as she had done the day before.\n\nTwo hours after sunrise on the following morning, the Lady Whimsical\nwas once more seated on her doorstep, and King Grumbelo was once more\nstanding in front of her.\n\n\"You are so beautiful that I shall never tire of looking at you,\" said\nthe King.\n\nAgain, the Lady Whimsical only smiled.\n\n\"You are so silent that you will always allow me to talk enough for\nboth of us,\" continued the King.\n\nThe Lady Whimsical smiled once more.\n\n\"And since you are so foolish as to send me away every morning,\" said\nthe King, \"you must surely be foolish enough to be the Queen of so wise\na King as myself.\"\n\nThe Lady Whimsical had never laughed so heartily at anything as she did\nat these words of King Grumbelo; and even after she had banged the door\nin his face, he could still hear her laughter as it floated out from\nthe windows of the dainty little house of rose leaves.  Now, all this\nwas very amusing for the Lady Whimsical, who was quite happy as long as\nshe had something to make her smile; but King Grumbelo was not so well\nsatisfied.\n\nIt was not amusing to carry on a conversation entirely alone, and he\neven began to wish secretly that the Lady Whimsical would not answer\nall his questions by laughing at them.  However, the Lady Whimsical\nshowed no signs of answering them in any other way, and at last the\nKing determined that he would make her speak to him just once, and\nafter that she might be as silent as she pleased.  So, one morning,\nwhen the dragon opened the apple-blossom gates to him as usual, he\nstrode up to Lady Whimsical with a resolute air.\n\n\"Lady Whimsical, I want you to come away with me and be my Queen,\" he\nsaid.\n\nShe shook her head and smiled.\n\n\"Why not?\" demanded King Grumbelo.\n\nShe smiled again.\n\n\"Why not?\" shouted King Grumbelo at the very top of his voice.\n\nWhen the Lady Whimsical shrugged her shoulders and merely smiled again,\nthe King lost his patience completely, which of course was an absurd\nthing to do, considering that he had come all this way on purpose to\nfind some one who knew how to be silent.\n\n\"Will nothing induce you to speak just one word to me?\" he exclaimed;\nand then he ran right away from her mocking laughter, and did not even\nwait to have the rose-leaf door banged in his face.\n\nIt was a very crestfallen King Grumbelo who knocked at the gates of\napple-blossom on the following morning.  But no one was sitting on the\ndoorstep of the dainty little house of rose leaves; and King Grumbelo's\nheart gave a great jump.\n\n\"Where is she?\" he demanded of the dragon, who had followed him along\nthe path and was looking at him with his aggravating smile.\n\nThe dragon became reproachful.\n\n\"It is your fault,\" he complained.  \"I told you she never spoke; why\ndid n't you listen to me?  You have driven her away now by your endless\nquestions; she has gone into her house of rose leaves, and the Wise\nWoman of the Wood alone knows what will bring her out again.\"\n\nKing Grumbelo looked up at the dainty little house of rose leaves, and\nthought he heard the sound of muffled laughter floating through the\nopen windows.  He turned once more to the dragon.\n\n\"Where does the Wise Woman of the Wood live?\" he asked.  But the dragon\nhad curled himself up in the sun and was already half asleep.\n\n\"Don't ask so many questions,\" he mumbled sleepily; and King Grumbelo\nstrode angrily out of the garden.  He mounted his horse and allowed it\nto take him wherever it would, for he had no idea where the Wise Woman\nof the Wood lived, and one way was as good as another.  Towards\nsundown, a blackbird hopped on to his horse's head and sang to him, and\nsomething in its song so reminded the King of Lady Whimsical's laughter\nthat he put out his hand to caress it.  No sooner did he touch it,\nhowever, than it turned into a squirrel, and scampered away from him so\nmischievously that he was again reminded of Lady Whimsical and of the\nway she, too, had run away from him.  He put spurs to his horse and\nchased the squirrel until he overtook it, when it immediately turned\ninto a field mouse and sprang into a large hole in the root of an old\nelm tree; and after it went King Grumbelo without a moment's\nhesitation.  He left his horse outside, and threw his crown on the\nground, and crept into the hole as humbly as though he had not been a\nKing at all.  The hole opened into a long, dark passage which grew\nsmaller and smaller as it wound deeper into the earth, so that King\nGrumbelo could scarcely drag himself along on his hands and knees.  It\ncame to an end at last, however, and he crawled into a cavern lighted\ndimly by glow-worms.  The field mouse was just ahead of him, but before\nhe could catch it he found that it was no longer there, and in its\nplace stood a tall witch woman, with a voice like a blackbird's, and\neyes like a squirrel's, and hair the colour of a field mouse.\n\n\"Tell me,\" said King Grumbelo, eagerly, \"are you the Wise Woman of the\nWood?\"\n\n\"Of course I am,\" said the witch woman.  \"Do you think any one else\nwould have been so much trouble to catch?  And now that you have caught\nme, what can I do for you?\"\n\n\"I want you to remove the spell from the Lady Whimsical, so that she\nmay be able to speak to me,\" said King Grumbelo.  The witch woman\nlaughed outright.\n\n\"There is no spell over the Lady Whimsical,\" she said.  \"She can talk\nas much as she pleases.\"\n\n\"Then why has she never spoken to me?\" asked the King in astonishment.\n\n\"You wished for the most silent woman in the world,\" said the Wise\nWoman of the Wood.  \"Now that you have found her, why do you complain?\"\n\nFor the first time in his life King Grumbelo felt distinctly foolish.\n\n\"I made a mistake,\" he owned.  \"I don't want a silent Queen at all.\"\n\n\"Then go back and tell her so,\" said the witch woman, promptly.\n\n\"Do you think that will make her come out from her house of rose\nleaves?\" asked King Grumbelo.\n\n\"I should n't wonder,\" said the Wise Woman of the Wood; \"but go and see\nfor yourself.  There is no need to thank me, for any one who takes the\ntrouble to follow the Wise Woman of the Wood to her home is welcome to\nwhat he may find when he gets there.\"\n\nIndeed, before he had time to thank her he found himself once more\noutside the tree, with his crown lying at his feet and his horse\nstanding at his side.  He was in such a hurry to get back to the Lady\nWhimsical, however, that he did not stay to pick up his crown, but rode\nbareheaded all through the night and reached the hedge of sweet-briar\nand honeysuckle precisely at two hours after sunrise.\n\n\"Dear, dear,\" complained the dragon; \"do you mean to say you 've come\nback again?\"\n\n\"I have some good news for you,\" said King Grumbelo, jovially.  \"There\nis no spell over the Lady Whimsical after all!\"\n\n\"Of course there is n't,\" said the dragon, as he slowly unfastened the\ngates of apple-blossom.  \"Did n't I tell you she was n't a Princess?\"\n\nKing Grumbelo did not stay to argue the point with him, but walked\nquickly up the path and stopped in front of the dainty little house all\nmade of rose leaves.\n\n\"Lady Whimsical,\" he said, very gently and humbly, \"will it please you\nto smile on me once more?  I have discovered that you are the wisest\nperson in the world, and that I am by far the most foolish.\"\n\nWhen the Lady Whimsical looked out of her window and saw the King\nstanding there so humbly without his crown, the tears came right into\nher wonderful eyes and stayed there.\n\n\"Oh!\" she cried, \"I am so glad you have come back!  I was afraid you\nwere never coming back any more.\"\n\nShe held out her two little hands, and the King kissed them.  Then she\ncame running down the stairs as fast as she could; and they sat on the\ndoorstep side by side, and talked.\n\n\"I feel as though I should never stop talking again!  Do you mind?\"\nasked Lady Whimsical.\n\n\"I should like nothing better,\" said King Grumbelo.  \"But first of all\nI must confess to you that I have an extremely ugly name.  Do you think\nyou can bear to hear it?\"\n\n\"I know it already!\" laughed the Lady Whimsical.  \"Do you suppose I\nhave n't coaxed it out of my dragon long ago?  But I, too, have\nsomething to confess to you.  Do you think it will make you angry?\"\n\n\"I am quite sure I shall never be angry again,\" declared the King.\n\n\"Then,\" said Lady Whimsical, looking extremely solemn, \"to begin with,\nI am not a Princess at all.\"\n\n\"As if I did n't know that!\" laughed the King.  \"The dragon told me,\never so long ago!\"\n\n\"He did n't tell you the rest, so stop laughing and listen to me,\" said\nLady Whimsical, with severity.  \"I knew all the while who you were and\nwhat you wanted, and I pretended to be under a spell just to tease you.\"\n\n\"I know that, too,\" said the King, triumphantly.  \"The Wise Woman of\nthe Wood told me.\"\n\n\"Did she tell you that I came and hid myself here on purpose, because I\nheard you were looking for a Princess and I wanted you to find me?\"\nasked the Lady Whimsical, softly.\n\n\"Nobody told me that,\" answered King Grumbelo; \"I guessed it for\nmyself.\"\n\n\"What will the Professor of Practical Jokes say, when you come home\nwithout the Princess you went out to find?\" she asked mischievously.\n\nThe King had no time to answer, for at that moment the Professor of\nPractical Jokes--whose profession always required him to arrive\nunexpectedly in places where he was not wanted--appeared at the\napple-blossom gates and answered Lady Whimsical's question himself.\n\n\"There is nothing to say,\" he observed.  \"There never was a Princess\nfor your Majesty to find, so of course your Majesty has n't found her.\"\n\n\"There never was anybody for you to find except me,\" added Lady\nWhimsical, who was nodding at the Professor as though she had known him\nall her life.  \"The other Princess was a practical joke, don't you see.\nDo you mean to say my dragon did not tell you _that_, too?\"\n\n\"Then, who are you?\" asked King Grumbelo in bewilderment.  The Lady\nWhimsical laughed, as she had laughed every day for a month when she\nbanged the door in the King's face.\n\n\"Can't you guess?\" she exclaimed.  \"Why, I am just the daughter of the\nProfessor of Practical Jokes!\"\n\nAnd the King only wondered that he had not guessed it long ago.\n\nAs they went out through the apple-blossom gates, the dainty little\nhouse of rose leaves vanished away because it was no longer wanted, and\nso did the beautiful flower-garden, and the hedge of sweet-briar and\nhoneysuckle, and the sleepy good-natured dragon.  They had no trouble\nin getting home, for the Wise Woman of the Wood had a hand in the\nmatter, and the road came racing towards them as fast as an express\ntrain; all they had to do was to stand quite still and wait until King\nGrumbelo's country came hurrying along, which was the most convenient\nway of travelling any one could possibly invent.  When the city reached\nthem they found they were just in time to be married, for the people\nwere on the point of celebrating their wedding for the hundred and\nfirst time; so the King and Queen were married almost before they knew\nit themselves, and certainly before the people discovered that somebody\nwas really being married at last.  This, however, was not at all\nsurprising, for the real wedding was very much the same as all the\nmake-believe ones, except that it took a little longer because the King\nand Queen were not so used to being married as the people were to\nmarrying them.\n\nAfter that, every one was as happy as it was possible to be.  The\ncountry had grown so accustomed to being frivolous that it never became\nserious again; and the King never made another law, because the people\nwere so fond of Lady Whimsical that they did everything she told them,\nand therefore no laws were needed.  The result of all this happiness\nwas that nobody in the kingdom ever grew old; and the Lady Whimsical\nwho sits and laughs on her throne at this very moment is the same Lady\nWhimsical who sat and laughed on the doorstep of her rose-leaf house,\nyears and years and years ago.\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: THE LADY EMMELINA IS ALWAYS KEPT IN HER PROPER PLACE NOW]\n\n\n\n\nThe Doll that came straight from Fairyland\n\nThe country was celebrating the tenth birthday of the Prince\nPerfection.  That particular country always celebrated the tenth\nbirthday of its princes and princesses, but never before had it gone so\ncompletely wild with joy.  The fireworks began punctually at sunrise,\nand so did everything else that was worth beginning; and the happy\nshouts of the people made conversation quite impossible, except in the\nroyal family, which was fully accustomed to being shouted at whenever\nthe country had a whole holiday.  The Prince had five hundred and\nfifty-four birthday presents, and his Secretaries spent all their\nsummer holidays in writing letters to acknowledge them; and every child\nin the kingdom who was of the same age as the Prince was allowed to\ncome to the palace gates and receive a royal smile and a large box of\nbarley sugar from Prince Perfection himself.  In the afternoon, the\nPrince drove through the streets over a carpet of flowers and smiled\nwithout stopping; and by his side sat the little Princess Pansy, who\nwas not smiling at all, for she had no birthday and no presents, and\ntwo years was a long time to wait before she, too, should be ten years\nold.  Still, she was so fond of the Prince Perfection that she would\nnot have let him guess for a moment that she felt envious of him,\nalthough this he was in no danger of doing, for he was so brimful of\nhappiness that he had no time to think about his sister at all.  Truly,\nit is worth while to be ten years old if one is a Prince!  In the\nevening there was a banquet of a hundred and twenty courses, which was\nthe exact number of months in the Prince's life; and the two children\nsat at the head of the table between their royal parents, and managed\nto keep awake until the moment arrived to cut the birthday cake.\n\nThat was when the catastrophe occurred.  At the moment nobody suspected\nthat it was going to be a catastrophe at all.  It seemed the most\nfortunate thing in the world that the Prince's godmother, the Fairy\nZigzag, should manage to arrive just in time to drink her godson's\nhealth.  Most people would think that a catastrophe was far more likely\nto have occurred if the King and Queen had forgotten to invite the\nFairy Zigzag.  That only shows how little most of us know about fairy\ngodmothers.  The truth is that the Fairy Zigzag was not like other\ngodmothers at all.  She did not like banquets and she did not like\nnoise; and she would much sooner have sent her present by post.  It\nwould never have done, however, to refuse the Queen's invitation, for\nthat is what no fairy godmother has ever been known to do; so she came\nat the very last minute with a very bad grace, and she meant to go away\nagain as soon as she could.\n\nBang!  What a noise she made as she came down the chimney in a cloud of\nblue smoke!  If she had not been quite so cross she would have arrived\nthrough the window in her best chariot drawn by sea-gulls; but she was\ndetermined to take as little trouble as possible over the matter, and\nno one could take less trouble over anything than to come straight down\nthe chimney.\n\n\"Oh!\" said every one with a little scream; and the Prince was so\nstartled that he cut an extremely crooked slice of cake.  As soon as\nthe blue smoke cleared away, however, and he saw that it was his fairy\ngodmother, he recovered his good manners without any difficulty, and\nwalked across the room to greet her.\n\n\"I am delighted to see you, dear godmother,\" said Prince Perfection\nwith his best birthday smile, which he had been saving up all day on\npurpose.  \"Would you like to have a piece of cake?\"\n\nHis parents beamed with pleasure at the charming manners of Prince\nPerfection; and the little Princess rubbed the sleep out of her eyes,\nand wondered how long it would take to live through two whole years, so\nthat she might have a birthday party and a birthday cake, and a visit\nfrom her fairy godmother.  The Fairy Zigzag, however, did not seem at\nall impressed by the charming manners of her godson.\n\n\"I never eat cake,\" she said, without giving so much as a look at the\ncrooked slice of cake which the Prince was handing her on a real gold\nplate.  Her godson put down the cake immediately, and took up a silver\ngoblet filled to the brim with sparkling ginger-beer.\n\n\"You have come just in time, dear godmother, to drink my health,\" he\nsaid, just as politely as ever.\n\n\"I never drink healths,\" said the Fairy Zigzag, frowning.  \"I have\nplenty of my own, thank you.  What's the matter with your health that\nyou want every one to drink it up?  You 'd better keep it: it may come\nin useful, later on.\"\n\nThis was such an entirely new view of the matter that a complete\nsilence fell on every one in the room; and all the guests put down\ntheir glasses of ginger beer, and stared into them to see if the\nPrince's health was floating about on the top.  In the midst of the\npause, the Fairy Zigzag stalked to the table, nodded to the royal\nparents, and took the seat that had been reserved for her at the\nQueen's right hand.\n\n\"So good of you to come,\" murmured the Queen, nervously.  \"We never\nthought you would give us so great a pleasure.\"\n\n\"Oh, didn't you?  Then, why did you invite me?\" snapped the fairy\ngodmother.  The Queen said nothing, for she did not know what to say.\nThe King did his best to put matters right.\n\n\"The Prince has been looking forward to your visit all day,\" he\nhastened to say.  \"The dear boy has hardly known how to wait until this\nevening.\"\n\n\"Rubbish,\" said the Fairy Zigzag, laughing most unpleasantly.  \"It is\nquite time for the dear boy to be in bed.  What is that other child\ndoing, over there?\"\n\nShe pointed with her wand at the little Princess Pansy, whose eyes were\nnow so full of sleep that she could hardly keep them open.  When,\nhowever, she saw the Fairy Zigzag pointing at her, she instantly became\nwide awake, and grew quite pink with pleasure at being noticed.  It was\nthe first time any one had noticed her all that day; but of course, one\nmust expect to be forgotten when it is somebody else's birthday.\n\n\"Oh!\" cried Princess Pansy, holding out both her hands to the cross old\nFairy Zigzag.  \"Are you really a fairy godmother?  I have never seen a\nreal fairy before, and I am so glad you have come!\"\n\nThe King and Queen were horrified at the familiar way in which the\nlittle Princess was speaking to such an important guest as the fairy\ngodmother.  It was true that she was only eight years old, but it was\nquite time she learnt some of the charming manners for which her\nbrother the Prince was so remarkable.  If the Fairy Zigzag had turned\nher into a toad, or a marble statue, or something chilly like that,\nthey would not have been in the least surprised.  But the Fairy Zigzag\ndid nothing of the sort.  She just took the two hands the Princess\nPansy held out to her, and looked her full in the face; and directly\nshe did that all the crossness faded out of her own, and instead of\nbeing just a disagreeable old fairy she suddenly appeared quite\ngood-natured and pleasant.  This, indeed, was no wonder; for it would\nhave been difficult to look at the little Princess without feeling\nhappier for it.  The King and Queen, however, mistook her silence for\nanger.\n\n\"Pray forgive her,\" they said, tremblingly.  \"She is so young, and she\ndoesn't know any better.  We have tried in vain to teach her good\nmanners.  Doubtless, when she is as old as the Prince Perfection she\nwill have learnt to be as polite as he is.\"\n\n\"It is to be hoped not,\" said the Fairy Zigzag, turning once more to\nthe royal parents.  \"And if I know anything about it, she will never be\nas polite as the Prince Perfection.  That child is a real child, and\nnone of us will ever make her anything else.  Now, I don't mean to\nwaste any more time; so come here, godson, and tell me what you would\nlike for a birthday present.\"\n\nThe Prince Perfection did not know what to say.  He longed to ask for a\nsteamboat that went by real steam, or a cannon that would fire real\ngunpowder, or a balloon that would take him wherever he wished to go;\nbut he felt that only an ordinary boy would have asked for such things\nas these, and Prince Perfection had always been told by his nurses that\nhe was not an ordinary boy.\n\n\"Please give me whatever you like, dear godmother,\" he said, and hoped\nvery much that it would be a steamboat with real steam.\n\n\"The dear boy does not like to appear greedy,\" said the Queen.\n\n\"Fiddlesticks!\" said the Fairy Zigzag, and then she pointed again at\nthe little Princess Pansy.  \"If I were to give _you_ a present, do you\nthink you would know what to choose?\" she asked her, smiling.\n\n\"Oh, how beautiful!\" exclaimed Princess Pansy, clapping her hands.  To\nhave a present without a birthday was more than she had ever believed\npossible.\n\n\"What will you have?\" asked the Fairy, raising her wand.  The Princess\ndid not stop to think.\n\n\"I will have a wax doll, please, with blue eyes and yellow hair and\npink cheeks, dressed in a white silk frock with lots of little frills,\"\nshe said, rapidly.  \"And, if you _could_ manage it,\" she added,\nglancing sideways at the Prince, her brother, \"I think I should like\none that doesn't melt when you put it near the fire.\"\n\n\"I think I can manage it,\" said the Fairy Zigzag, and down came her\nwand with a sharp tap on the table.  Princess Pansy gave a cry of\ndelight.  In front of her lay the most beautiful wax doll any little\ngirl of eight years old has ever possessed.  She had blue eyes and\nyellow curls and pink cheeks; she was dressed in a white silk frock\nwith rows and rows of little frills; she had a gold crown perched on\nher head, and she wore high-heeled shoes on her dainty feet; she had a\nreal pocket with a real lace handkerchief sticking out of it; she\ncarried a fan in one hand and a scent bottle in the other; and she\nactually possessed real six-buttoned gloves, which could be drawn on\nand off her little hands.  Princess Pansy was breathless.  She had\nnever seen anything so beautiful before.\n\n\"You must thank the Fairy Zigzag,\" whispered the King and Queen.  The\nlittle Princess gave a sigh and looked up; it seemed so stupid to say\n\"Thank you\" for such a superb dolly as hers.  After all, she had to say\nnothing whatever, for the Fairy Zigzag was no longer there; she had\ngone away without a chariot, or a cloud of blue smoke, or even a bang!\n\n\"She has given nothing to her godson,\" said the courtiers to one\nanother; and they fully expected that Prince Perfection would fly into\na passion.  However, Prince Perfection did not fly into a passion.  He\nlooked at the little Princess as she laughed with joy over her\nbeautiful new doll; he thought just once of the steamboat that would\nhave gone by real steam, and the cannon that would have fired real\ngunpowder, and the balloon that would have taken him wherever he wished\nto go; and then he remembered that he was ten years old and a Prince,\nand he flung back his head and began to whistle.\n\n\"It doesn't matter,\" he said, indifferently.  \"I have five hundred and\nfifty-four presents upstairs, and I don't care for dolls.\"\n\nLittle Princess Pansy had never been so contented in the whole of her\nlife.  The palace seemed a different place to her, now that it\ncontained the doll that had come from Fairyland; and she immediately\nnamed her the Lady Emmelina, which was the most important name she\ncould remember on the spur of the moment.  From that day the Princess\nand her doll were never separated.  When the Prince and Princess went\nfor a drive, the Lady Emmelina sat up stiffly between them; when the\nProfessors came to give the children their lessons, they found that\nthey had to give them also to a little lady in a white silk frock with\nrows and rows of little frills, who stared at them solemnly with her\nlarge, impassive blue eyes, and never answered a word to any of their\nquestions.  Princess Pansy no longer wished to be ten years old; she no\nlonger wished for anything: she had everything she wanted in the\nunchangeable Lady Emmelina.  For the Lady Emmelina never varied; the\nPrincess might have as many moods as she pleased, but the Lady Emmelina\nmerely smiled.  For a constant companion, it would have been difficult\nto find any one more delightful than the Lady Emmelina.  The Prince\nPerfection, however, took a very different view of the matter.  Thanks\nto the Lady Emmelina, he had no one to play with.  He had never been\nleft so much to himself in his life, and in spite of his excellent\nopinion of himself he found himself extremely dull.  He could no longer\nplay cricket, since the Princess was not there to bowl for him; it was\nno fun to play at soldiers if the Princess was not there to be on the\nlosing side; he could not pretend to be the Royal Executioner if the\nPrincess was not there to be executed.  To be sure, he had five hundred\nand fifty-four birthday presents; but what consolation could they\nafford him when he was still without a steamboat that went by real\nsteam?  The Lady Emmelina was the cause of all his misfortunes, and he\ncould not bear the Lady Emmelina.  It was the Lady Emmelina who had\ncome in the place of his real steamboat and his real cannon and his\nreal balloon; it was the Lady Emmelina who had bewitched the little\nPrincess, his sister, and robbed him of his best playfellow.  And the\nPrince Perfection, whatever his faults were, was extremely fond of the\nlittle Princess.\n\n\"If you will come and play cricket with me, I will let you have the\nfirst innings,\" he said to her in despair one sunny afternoon.\n\n\"It is far too rough a game for the Lady Emmelina,\" answered Princess\nPansy, shaking her head.\n\n\"Then choose any game you like, only do come and play with me,\" begged\nthe Prince.  He had never had to beg so hard for anything before, for\nthe little Princess had been his willing slave as long as he could\nremember.\n\n\"We cannot possibly come this afternoon,\" answered Princess Pansy.\n\"The Lady Emmelina is going to have a tea-party.  I will ask her to\ninvite you if you like.\"\n\nThe Prince, however, would have nothing to do with Lady Emmelina's\ntea-party.  He went and sat by the pond instead, and thought how fine\nhis steamboat would have looked if it had gone puffing across the water\nwith real smoke coming out of the funnel.  The mere thought of it made\nhim dislike the Lady Emmelina so much more than before that he made up\nhis mind to be revenged on her.  Now, this was an extremely bold thing\neven to think about, for she had come straight from Fairyland, and it\nis never safe to meddle with toys that have come straight from\nFairyland.  For all that, the Prince crept into the nursery that very\nsame night, when everyone in the palace was asleep, and prepared to\nhave his revenge on the waxen Lady Emmelina.  There she sat in all her\nmagnificence on the nursery table, with both her gloves tightly\nbuttoned, and both her pointed toes turned upwards.  The very sight of\nher annoyed the jealous little Prince.  He pattered across the floor on\nhis bare feet, and seized the Lady Emmelina by the arm.  She greeted\nhim with a shrill and angry shriek.\n\n\"How dare you?  Let me go at once!\" she screamed.  The Prince was so\nsurprised that he dropped her on the table again.  The Lady Emmelina,\nshaking all over with fury, began smoothing out her rows of crumpled\nfrills.\n\n\"The idea of such a thing!\" she gasped.  \"I declare, you have actually\npushed my crown on one side, and there is no looking-glass in the room.\nI have a great mind to report you to Fairyland.\"\n\n\"You may do what you like,\" answered the Prince, who was no coward and\nhad recovered from his astonishment.  \"You have bewitched the Princess\nPansy, and I mean to hide you where no one will be able to find you.\"\n\nNo sooner had he uttered these words than the Lady Emmelina turned\nextremely pale.  If he had tried to melt her at the fire or to cut off\nher head with the scissors, which was the kind of thing he usually did\nto his sister's dolls, she knew that she would have been safe; but he\nhad threatened to do the one thing that even the fairies who protected\nher could not prevent him from doing.  Her only hope was that he would\nhide her somewhere so that she should have time to escape before\nsunrise; for after sunrise all her powers of moving or speaking would\ndesert her and she would be nothing but a wax doll again.  She need not\nhave been afraid, for the Prince did not mean to waste any more time\nthan he could help; and the next moment she was being carried swiftly\nout of the room under his arm.  Downstairs ran the little Prince, with\nhis hand over the Lady Emmelina's mouth to prevent her from screaming;\nand along the marble passages he hastened, until he came to a little\ndoor that led into the garden, and this he unlocked with the diamond\nkey that usually hung on the nail on the nursery wall.  It is not\npleasant to run without shoes along a gravel path, and Prince\nPerfection soon turned aside on to the lawn, and trotted over the grass\nin search of a hiding place for the Lady Emmelina.  A large white stone\nlay in the middle of the lawn and gleamed in the moonlight.  The Prince\ndid not remember having seen it there before; indeed, it was not likely\nthat the royal gardeners would have allowed it to remain in such a\nplace for a moment.  He stooped down and rolled it on one side, and\nfound that it covered a neat round hole lined with green moss.  It was\nthe very place for the Lady Emmelina; and he laid her gently in the\nvery middle of it.\n\n\"I hope you will not be very cramped,\" said Prince Perfection, politely.\n\nLady Emmelina lay motionless on the mossy ground, and stared at the\nmoon.  No one would have thought that she was the same dolly who had\nscreamed so angrily in the nursery ten minutes ago.\n\n\"It is the nicest place I could have found in the whole garden,\"\ncontinued Prince Perfection a little anxiously.  After all, she was a\nvery beautiful doll, and she had come straight from Fairyland.\n\nStill the Lady Emmelina stared intently at the moon, with her large\nblue eyes.\n\n\"I should never have thought of putting you anywhere if you had not\nbewitched the Princess,\" declared Prince Perfection, feeling still more\nuncomfortable.  It was not easy to go on apologising to some one who\npersisted in staring at the moon just as though no one was speaking to\nher.\n\n\"Why did you bewitch the Princess Pansy?\" cried the little Prince.  \"If\nyou will promise not to bewitch her any more, I will take you straight\nback to the nursery.\"\n\nBut although he waited eagerly for her answer, not a word came from the\nLady Emmelina; and the Prince ceased to feel sorry for her, and gave up\napologising.\n\n\"It is your own fault, and I don't care a bit,\" he said, impatiently;\nand he rolled the large white stone over the hole, until the doll from\nFairyland was completely hidden.  It is a wonder the fairies did not\ninterfere; but perhaps they had their reasons.\n\nThere was no peace for any one in the palace when the Princess\ndiscovered that the Lady Emmelina was gone; and she discovered it\nbefore breakfast the very next morning.  It was in vain that the Prince\noffered to give her his five hundred and fifty-four birthday presents\nif she would only stop crying: the Princess wanted her doll from\nFairyland, and nothing but her doll from Fairyland would console her.\nEvery one who loved the little Princess--and that was every one in the\npalace--began looking for the Lady Emmelina; but no one succeeded in\nfinding a trace of her.  This, however, was by no means so surprising\nas it sounds, for the large white stone was no longer in the middle of\nthe lawn, and the neat round hole lined with green moss had disappeared\njust as completely.  The Prince was no less unhappy than his sister.\nNothing was turning out as he had expected; for, instead of being ready\nto play with him again, the little Princess was far too miserable to\nthink of playing at all.  He tried all day long to coax her into a good\nhumour; but bedtime came, and he had not won a single smile from her.\nIt was then that he made up his mind to go out into the world and find\nthe Lady Emmelina.  So that night the Prince once more unhooked the\ndiamond key from the nail on the nursery wall, and stole into the\ngarden in the moonlight.  This time, however, he had not forgotten to\nput on his shoes and stockings and his second-best court suit, for when\na prince goes out into the world he must at least do his best to look\nlike a prince.  When he came to the lawn he stopped and stared with\namazement; for there, in the moonlight, lay the large white stone under\nwhich he had hidden the doll from Fairyland.  Overjoyed at reaching the\nend of his journey so soon, he ran forward and rolled the stone on one\nside.  There, to be sure, was the neat round hole lined with green\nmoss; but in the middle of it sat a large grasshopper, and not a sign\nof the Lady Emmelina was to be seen.\n\nThe Prince was so disappointed that he had the greatest difficulty in\nremembering that he was ten years old, and that crying was therefore\nout of the question.  The grasshopper was winking at him as though he\nunderstood how he felt.\n\n\"I guessed you would come,\" he said, in a kind voice.  \"I just waited\non purpose.\"\n\n\"Where has she gone?\" asked Prince Perfection, dolefully.\n\n\"Ask me something easier than that,\" answered the grasshopper.  \"I\ndidn't see her go.  I happened to look in as I was passing; and when I\nfound she was gone I thought I'd just wait and tell you she was gone,\ndon't you see?\"\n\n\"What is the good of waiting to tell me something I could have found\nout for myself?\" asked Prince Perfection.  \"If you can't help me to\nfind her, you might just as well not be there.\"\n\n\"I didn't say I couldn't help you to find her,\" said the grasshopper,\nlooking hurt; \"though if you are going to be cross about it I don't\nknow that I will.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" cried Prince Perfection, \"I will never be cross again, if you\nwill help me to find the Lady Emmelina.\"\n\n\"Then why did you hide her in the first place?\" asked the grasshopper.\nThe Prince looked foolish.\n\n\"Because I had no one to play with,\" he said.\n\n\"If you do find her,\" continued the grasshopper, \"do you think the\nPrincess will play with you again?\"\n\n\"Oh, no,\" sighed the Prince.  \"She will only want to play with the Lady\nEmmelina.\"\n\n\"Then don't try to find the Lady Emmelina,\" said the grasshopper,\npromptly.\n\n\"I must,\" said Prince Perfection.  \"Anything is better than seeing the\nPrincess cry.  I took her doll away, you see, and it is my fault that\nPansy is so unhappy.  I don't mean to go home again until I have found\nthe Lady Emmelina.\"\n\n\"Right you are,\" said the grasshopper.  \"You're the man for me.  I'll\nhelp you as far as I can, but you must come down here first; I can't go\non shouting like this.\"\n\n\"Down there?\" said the Prince.  \"The hole is much too small.\"\n\n\"Nonsense!  Come and try,\" said the grasshopper, and indeed, before he\ntried at all, the Prince found himself inside the neat round hole, with\nthe mossy walls reaching far above his head, and the grasshopper\nshaking hands with him.\n\n\"Feel all right?\" asked the grasshopper.  \"Sit down and get your\nbreath.  These sudden changes are apt to be exhausting if you are not\nused to them.\"\n\n\"Are you used to them?\" asked the Prince, when he had recovered enough\nbreath to speak.\n\n\"Dear me, yes!\" said the grasshopper with a chuckle.  \"When I get up in\nthe morning I never know how many changes I may not have to go through\nbefore the day is over.  Don't think I am complaining though, for of\ncourse it is part of my profession.\"\n\n\"What is your profession?\" asked the Prince.\n\n\"Chief Spy in Particular to the Fairy Queen,\" answered the grasshopper.\n\"It's very hard work, I can tell you; some days I haven't a moment to\nmyself.  Of course, I find out a great deal that nobody else knows,\nwhich is always amusing.  Yesterday, for instance, if I hadn't been a\ncockchafer, a doll's teapot, a garden seat, a rose tree and a nursery\ntable, I shouldn't know as much as I do about you and the Lady\nEmmelina.\"\n\n\"Then please tell me what I must do in order to find the Lady\nEmmelina,\" begged the Prince.\n\n\"By all means,\" said the grasshopper, cheerfully.  \"Go straight on\nwithout turning to the right or the left; and whenever some one greets\nyou, ask him politely to give you what he is thinking about, and then\nyou will be able to find the Lady Emmelina.\"\n\nIt seemed rather a roundabout way of finding anything; but, as the\ngrasshopper disappeared directly he had finished speaking, there was\nnothing to do but to follow his advice.  The first part was easy\nenough, for just in front of him the Prince noticed a little door in\nthe green mossy wall, which he was quite sure had not been there\nbefore; and through this he straightway walked.  He immediately found\nhimself in a blaze of sunshine on the sea-shore, with green waves\nstretching before him as far as he could see, and nothing on either\nside of him except the flat stony beach.  \"It's all very well to tell\nany one to go straight on, but how am I to get across the sea?\" thought\nthe Prince.  He had never been afraid of anything in his life, however,\nso he ran down the beach and put one foot into the white foam at the\nedge.\n\n\"Good-day to you!\" said a voice.  \"Who are you, and what do you want?\"\n\n\"I am Prince Perfection, and I want what you are thinking about,\"\nanswered the Prince, boldly, although he could not see who was speaking.\n\n\"That is a strange thing to want,\" said the voice; \"for I was just\nthinking about a little steamboat that would go by real steam; and how\nyou can possibly want such a thing as that is more than I can\nunderstand.\"\n\nAt that moment there was a faint puffing sound in the distance, which\ncame nearer and nearer; and presently over the waves rode a most\nperfect little steamboat, with real smoke coming out of the funnel.  It\nwas just large enough for the Prince, and he stepped on board directly\nit came near enough, and put his hand on the little brass wheel.\n\n\"Thank you very much,\" he said as loudly as he could, in the hope that\nthe owner of the mysterious voice would hear him.  Nobody answered him;\nbut he wondered why an old crab, who was shuffling along the beach,\nchose that particular moment to wink at him.\n\nCertainly, no one has ever reached the shore on the opposite side of\nthe sea so quickly as Prince Perfection in his real steamboat.  It was\na pleasure to hear it puff as it cut through the big green waves; and\nhe stood like a real captain with his hand on the little brass wheel,\nand steered it right into a bay that seemed waiting on purpose for it.\nIt was very sad that it should disappear directly he stepped out of it;\nbut as it had come from nowhere at all because he wanted it, he could\nnot complain because it went back to nowhere at all when he had done\nwith it.  So he sighed twice, and then walked straight ahead as before,\nup the beach and over a flat grassy plain, covered with yellow poppies\nand gorse bushes and purple heather.  Nothing could have been easier\nthan this; and Prince Perfection had not the slightest wish to turn to\nthe right or the left, until he came suddenly upon a thick clump of\ngorse bushes which lay in the very middle of his path.  He made two\nattempts to clamber over it; but, each time, he was caught in the gorse\nbushes and was scratched all over; and even if one is ten years old and\na prince, it is hard to bear being scratched all over by a gorse bush.\nPrince Perfection began to wonder if it would be very wrong to follow\nthe path to the right until he should come to an opening, but before he\nhad time to decide such a difficult question a shrill voice broke the\nsilence once more.\n\n\"Good-day to you,\" it said.  \"Who are you, and what do you want?\"\n\n\"I am Prince Perfection, and I want what you are thinking about,\"\nanswered the Prince, boldly.\n\n\"How ridiculous!\" laughed the voice.  \"Why, I am thinking about a\ncannon, a real cannon that will fire real gunpowder.  Surely, you can\nwant nothing so useless as that?\"\n\n\"Indeed, I do,\" said the Prince; and there stood the most perfect\nlittle real cannon, loaded with real shot, and in his hand was a\nlighted match ready to fire it with.  He lost no time in pointing it\nstraight at the clump of furze bushes, and the real gunpowder made a\nflash and a splutter, and the shot went right into the middle of the\nyellow gorse and blew it all away so completely that not a trace of it\nwas left, except one small bush that the Prince had no difficulty in\njumping over.  The cannon went back to nowhere at all, just as the\nsteamboat had done.\n\n\"Thank you very much,\" said the Prince Perfection as loudly as he\ncould; and again no one answered him.  He was much surprised, however,\nwhen he looked back and found that the gorse bush had disappeared as\nsoon as he had jumped over it.  After that he walked on for a long way;\nand just as he was beginning to feel tired, and the sun was beginning\nto think about setting, he tumbled right up against a big iceberg.  It\nis not usual for icebergs to drop down suddenly in the middle of the\nroad, but that is what this particular iceberg did, and that is why the\nPrince tumbled against it.\n\n\"Dear me,\" sighed Prince Perfection, for even a prince's legs are not\nvery long when he is only ten years old, and it is not pleasant to have\nto climb an iceberg at the end of a long walk.  There was no help for\nit, however, for there was the iceberg waiting to be climbed; so the\nlittle Prince went straight at it as bravely as he could.  Any one who\nis accustomed to climbing icebergs will at once know how difficult\nPrince Perfection found it; and he tried seven times without being able\nto get up a single yard of it.\n\n\"Good-day to you,\" said a voice, which sounded as though it came from\nthe very middle of the iceberg.  \"Who are you, and what do you want?\"\n\n\"I am so glad you have come!\" exclaimed the Prince; although, for that\nmatter, no one had come at all.  \"I am Prince Perfection, and I want\nwhat you are thinking about.\"\n\n\"There certainly is no accounting for tastes,\" observed the voice.  \"I\nwas just thinking about a real balloon that would take me wherever I\nwanted to go; and what use that would be to you I cannot imagine.\"\n\nThe Prince did not trouble to explain what use it would be to him, for\nat that very instant the balloon floated down towards him, and he\nstepped into it as a matter of course.  It was far more beautiful than\nanything he had ever been able to imagine, however; and the movement of\nit was so delicious that he fell sound asleep the moment it began to\ncarry him upwards; and he could not keep awake long enough even to\nthank the sender of it.  When he awoke, he was lying on the grass under\na silver birch tree, and in front of him was a red brick fort with\nbattlements and a drawbridge.  It was so like the fort in which he kept\nall his tin soldiers in the nursery at home that he was not at all\nsurprised when a sentinel without a head came out in answer to his\nknock.  He remembered melting off the head of that particular tin\nsoldier only two days before, and he was much relieved when he showed\nno signs of recognising him.  As the poor tin fellow had no head, this\nwas hardly to be wondered at.\n\n\"Make haste, and let down the drawbridge,\" said the Prince, banging\naway at the wooden gate with his fists; \"I want to see if the Lady\nEmmelina is inside.\"\n\nHe thought he could do what he liked with his own property, but the\nsoldier without a head was evidently of another opinion.  He did not\nattempt to let down the drawbridge, and he answered the Prince in a\nrhyme which he seemed to have made up for the occasion:\n\n  \"What a ridiculous clatter\n  Over _such_ a small matter!\n  I was peacefully napping\n  When you came with your tapping;\n  You are vastly mistaken\n  If you think I've forsaken\n  My official position\n  Because no physician\n  Could give me a cranium\n  Like a pot of geranium.\n  And these are my orders--\n  No one passes these borders\n  Unless he is able,\n  In song, rhyme, or fable,\n  The real, true intention\n  Of his coming to mention!\"\n\n\nTo be sure, it was not much of a rhyme, but it was not bad for a\nsoldier who had no head.  When he had finished it he went away again,\nand the Prince sat down disconsolately under the silver birch tree.  He\nfelt more convinced than before that the Lady Emmelina was inside the\nfort; but although he thought as much as most people would over an\nordinary arithmetic lesson, he could not think of a single rhyme.\n\n\"Good-day to you,\" said a voice that seemed to come from the very top\nof the birch tree.  \"Who are you, and what do you want?\"\n\n\"I am Prince Perfection, and I want what you are thinking about,\"\nanswered the Prince, although he hardly hoped, this time, that he would\nget what he wanted.\n\n\"Do you really mean it?\" remarked the voice.  \"I was just composing a\nsong about a charming little lady in a white silk frock, who lives\nbehind that drawbridge over there.  It is not very likely you can want\nthat!\"\n\n\"Hurrah!\" shouted the little Prince, standing on his head for joy.\n\"Then, it is the Lady Emmelina!\"\n\n\"The fact is,\" continued the voice, without noticing the interruption,\n\"I always make poetry when there is nothing else to do.  So does the\ntin soldier.  He can't help it, poor fellow, because he has lost his\nhead, you see.  If you have lost your head you cannot be expected to\nmake anything except poetry.\"\n\n\"Have you lost your head, too, may I ask?\" said the Prince, as politely\nas he could put such an awkward question.\n\n\"For the time being I have no head to lose,\" answered the voice.  \"That\nis how I happened to be inventing a song just as you came by.  Are you\nsure there is nothing else you would like better?  A nightmare, for\ninstance, or a thunder-storm?\"\n\nThe Prince was sure he would like nothing better; and the voice in the\nbirch tree sang him the following song, very softly:\n\n  \"Here I've come as I was bidden\n  To seek the dolly you have hidden--\n  The dolly with the yellow hair,\n  With cheeks so pink and eyes so fair,\n  With hands that move and feet that stand--\n  The doll that came from Fairyland.\n\n  \"Do you pretend you've never seen her,\n  The dainty Lady Emmelina?\n  I pray you let the drawbridge down,\n  I'm ten years old and I can frown!\n  I mean to find her--here's my hand!\n  I want the doll from Fairyland.\n\n  \"The song I'm singing--let me mention--\n  Is not a song of my invention;\n  It comes like steamboats sometimes do,\n  Like real balloons and cannons too;\n  It comes like all that's real and grand,\n  All the way from Fairyland!\"\n\n\n\"Why,\" said Prince Perfection, \"one would almost think you had made up\nthe song on purpose for me!\"\n\nWhat the birch tree thought about it has never been known, for when the\nlittle Prince looked up again it had gone away to nowhere at all.\n\nThe soldier without a head let the drawbridge down, when he heard the\nsong that had come all the way from Fairyland.  The Prince did not stop\nto thank him, but hastened into the fort and looked round anxiously for\nthe Lady Emmelina.  He had very little difficulty in finding her,\nhowever, for she occupied nearly the whole of the ground floor.  She\nwas sitting up against the wall, supported on one side by an ambulance\nwaggon, and on the other by a camp-fire which, strange to say, had not\neven singed her elegant fan, although it burned with the brightest of\nred and yellow flames.\n\n\"There you are!  Will you come home with me?\" said the Prince, rather\nnervously; for he was not much bigger than she was, now, and he was a\nlittle afraid lest she should have unpleasant recollections of the neat\nround hole lined with green moss.  To his relief, she seemed quite glad\nto see him.\n\n\"To be sure I will,\" said the Lady Emmelina.  \"I should not be fit to\nbe seen if I stayed much longer in this dusty old place!\"\n\nSo they went home together, and of course that did not take them long,\nfor the way home is always the shortest way in the world.  To begin\nwith, the balloon was waiting for them as they came out of the fort;\nand it carried them all the way to the sea-shore before they had time\nto notice that they were in a balloon at all.  When they reached the\nsea-shore they found that the steamboat was waiting for them, too; and\nthe steamboat landed them on the opposite side of the sea even before\nthey knew that they had stepped out of the balloon; and after that the\nPrince never knew what did happen, for the next thing he noticed was\nthat he had grown to his proper size again, and was standing once more\nin the royal nursery with the Lady Emmelina tucked under his arm.\nThere at the table in the middle of the room sat the little Princess\nPansy, and in front of her was a large bowl of bread and milk.\n\n\"Oh!  Oh!  You have come back at last!\" cried the Princess, jumping\ndown from her chair.  \"I am so glad, I am so glad!\"\n\n\"I thought you would be glad to see her again,\" said Prince Perfection,\nand he handed her the doll from Fairyland.\n\n\"I didn't mean _that_!\" exclaimed the little Princess.  And then, sad\nas it is to relate, they both forgot all about the Lady Emmelina; and\nthe next minute, she found herself lying face downwards on the floor,\nwhile the Prince and Princess hugged each other.  And it was of no use\nfor the royal nurses to talk about bread and milk, for not a thing\nwould the two children touch until they had talked as much as they\nwanted.\n\n\"You will not cry any more, now that you have the Lady Emmelina to play\nwith, will you?\" said Prince Perfection, who, strange to say, did not\nfeel in the least bit jealous of the Lady Emmelina as long as she lay\nface downwards on the floor.\n\n\"I don't think I want to play with the Lady Emmelina much,\" answered\nPrincess Pansy.  \"I think I would rather play with you.  It has been so\ndull while you have been away.\"  For, although the Prince did not know\nit, he had been away for a whole month.\n\n\"I am delighted to hear it,\" cried the little Prince.  \"Let us play at\nRoyal Executioner, and _you_ shall be executioner.\"\n\n\"Oh, no,\" said the little Princess.  \"I would _much_ sooner be\nexecuted.\"\n\nAs they disputed the point politely, the grasshopper suddenly jumped in\nat the window and nodded at them.\n\n\"Good-day to you,\" he said.  \"I was just thinking at that moment about\na steamboat and a cannon and a real balloon.  Strange, wasn't it?\"\n\nImmediately the Prince found a steamboat in his right hand and a cannon\nin his left; while outside the window floated a charming balloon, just\nlarge enough for himself and Princess Pansy.\n\n\"Wait a minute,\" cried the Prince, as the grasshopper jumped on to the\nwindow-sill again.  \"I want to tell you all about--\"\n\n\"No need to do that,\" chuckled the grasshopper.  \"You don't suppose\nI've been a crab and a gorse bush and an iceberg and a silver birch\ntree for nothing, do you?\"\n\nThat time he really hopped away to nowhere at all, and the children\nhave never seen him since.  This does not matter in the least, however,\nfor they are not likely to want his help again; the Lady Emmelina is\nalways kept in her proper place now, and the Princess is no longer\nbewitched by her.  It is only reasonable to suppose that the Fairy\nZigzag had something to do with the change in the Lady Emmelina, but\nthe Fairy Zigzag says that she never troubled herself about it at all.\nHowever that may be, the children have never had an unhappy moment\nsince Prince Perfection went out into the world to find the doll that\ncame straight from Fairyland.\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: \"WILL YOU COME AND PLAY WITH ME, LITTLE WISDOM?\"]\n\n\n\n\nTHOSE WYMPS AGAIN\n\nThere was great consternation in Fairyland, for it was suddenly\ndiscovered that the sun had been shining crookedly all the morning.  It\nwas consequently two hours later than anybody thought it was; and this,\nas it happened, was a very serious matter, for all the fairies had been\ninvited to the christening of the little Prince Charming, and it would\nnever do for them to arrive late.  Of course, the wymps were at the\nbottom of it and the sun had no idea that he was not shining quite in\nhis usual way; but no one in Fairyland had time to trouble about that,\nand, without waiting even for the butterflies to be harnessed, away\nflew all the fairies in a regular scurry.  Now, even fairies are apt to\ndo stupid things sometimes, especially when they are flustered and the\nwymps have been at work; so there may be some excuse for what they did\non that particular morning.  The fact is, they were so anxious to\narrive in time to give their christening presents to the royal baby,\nthat when they met a christening party coming along the road they never\nstopped to see whether it was the right christening party or not, but\njust flew down and presented their gifts to the baby, one after\nanother, as fast as they could speak.\n\n\"I give you beauty,\" said one.  \"And I, thoughtfulness,\" said another.\n\"And I, wisdom,\" said a third.  \"And I, patience,\" said a fourth.  \"And\nI, contentment,\" said a fifth; and so on, until all the gifts of\nFairyland had been given to the baby in the nurse's arms.  Then, when\nthey had quite finished speaking, the poor, flurried little fairies\ndiscovered that the baby was the daughter of a poor peasant and his\nwife, while Prince Charming lived in quite another country, a very long\nway off.  It was a great calamity, no doubt, but nothing could be done,\nfor the fairies had no more gifts left; so they returned very sadly to\nFairyland, and hoped that the wymps would not find it out.  Of course,\nthe wymps did find it out, for they had arranged the whole thing from\nthe very beginning.  Still, the wymps are not nearly so bad as they\npretend to be; and when they had finished laughing over their joke they\ndid their best to make things right again by going in large numbers to\nPrince Charming's christening.  They behaved very noisily when they got\nthere; and they ate every bit of the christening cake and ended in\ngiving the baby Prince the only nice gift the wymps have the power to\ngive; and that is the nicest gift in the world, for it is called\nLaughter.  To be sure, there had never been such a topsy-turvey\nchristening party before; but all the guests enjoyed it thoroughly, and\nthat cannot be said of all the parties to which the fairies are\ninvited.  The Fairy Queen could not help smiling when she heard what\nhappened.  \"Never mind!\" she said.  \"Some day, Prince Charming shall\nhave all the gifts of Fairyland, too.  Meanwhile, he has something far\nbetter than we should have given him.\"\n\nThe peasant's daughter grew up as beautiful and as wise as all the\ngifts of Fairyland could make her.  Everything she did was as well done\nas the cleverest people in the world, all put together, could have done\nit; and everything she said was as wise as the contents of all the\nbooks in the King's library.  When she cooked the Sunday dinner, she\nmade it taste like a banquet of twenty courses; she had only to look at\nthe flowers in the garden, and they bloomed as luxuriantly as though\nthey had been brought straight from Fairyland.  She helped all the\nvillage people when they were in a difficulty, for her advice was the\nvery best that could be had; and they soon forgot that she was only a\nchild, and they called her \"Little Wisdom\" instead of the ordinary name\nby which she had been christened.  She loved to sit by herself in the\ncherry orchard, and she wondered how the other children could laugh and\nplay when there was so much thinking to be done.  She never laughed nor\nplayed herself, for the fairies had been so anxious to make her wise\nand beautiful, that they had not thought of giving her anything so\nordinary as happiness.  Every one envied her parents for having such a\nwonderful daughter; but for all that the peasant and his wife were not\nsatisfied.\n\n\"It is a great pity,\" grumbled her father, \"that all the gifts of\nFairyland should have been wasted on a girl.  If the child had been a\nboy, now, she would have made some stir in the world.\"\n\n\"For my part,\" sighed her mother, \"I would gladly see her lose all the\ngifts of Fairyland if she would only laugh and cry like other children.\"\n\nIn the meantime the little Prince Charming was growing up without the\nhelp of a single gift from Fairyland.  Never had the palace contained\nsuch an idle, careless little Prince; he laughed at everything that\nhappened, morning, noon, and night; he played tricks on all his\nProfessors instead of learning his lessons, and he could not keep grave\nlong enough even to say the alphabet.  He was so determined to look on\nthe bright side of everything, that when people were angry with him he\nthought it was only their way of being amusing; and when they tried to\npunish him, he found it such a good joke that they very soon gave up\nthe attempt.  The people, one and all, loved the merry little Prince\nwho laughed at life from his royal nursery and refused to grow any\nolder; but the King viewed the matter in quite another light.\n\n\"What will become of the country,\" said his Majesty, \"if the boy does\nnot learn to be serious?\"\n\n\"He is so happy,\" said the Queen, apologetically.  \"Is not that enough?\"\n\nThe King evidently thought it was not nearly enough, for he despatched\na page at once to fetch Prince Charming from the nursery.  The Prince\ncame whistling into the room, with his hands in his pockets, which was\nnot a princely way of behaving, to begin with.\n\n\"You are eleven years old,\" began the King, solemnly.\n\n\"Everybody tells me that,\" said the Prince, smiling gaily.  He supposed\ngrown-up people could not help saying the same thing so often; at all\nevents he did not mean to let it trouble him.\n\n\"It is time you learned to be serious,\" continued the King, still more\nsolemnly.\n\n\"To be serious?  What is that?  Is it a new game?\" asked Prince\nCharming, eagerly.\n\n\"Hush!\" whispered the Queen, anxiously.  \"It is what every one has to\nbe,--the Prime Minister, and the Head Cook, and everybody.\"\n\n\"Surely,\" laughed the little Prince, \"if so many people are occupied in\nbeing serious there is no need for me to bother about it!\"\n\n\"You cannot even read,\" said the King, frowning.\n\n\"No; but my Professor can,\" said Prince Charming.  \"He can read the\nlongest words in the dictionary without taking breath.  When any one in\nthe kingdom can read so beautifully as that, it would surely be\nimpolite to try to imitate him!\"\n\n\"The poorest children in the kingdom know far more than you do,\" said\nthe King, who was rapidly losing patience.\n\n\"Then there are plenty of people to tell me everything I want to know,\"\nsmiled the Prince.  \"What is the use of knowing just as much as\neverybody else?  There would be nothing left to talk about.\"\n\nThe King looked at the Queen in despair.\n\n\"It is not the boy's fault,\" said the Queen soothingly; \"you see, the\nfairies did not come to his christening.\"\n\n\"And the wymps did,\" sighed the King.  \"I suppose that is why we have a\nstupid son without an idea in his head.\"\n\nPrince Charming took off his crown and felt his head very carefully.\n\n\"What is an idea?\" he asked.  \"And why have I no idea in my head?  Have\nyou got one in your head, father?\"\n\nThe King was so angry at being asked whether he had an idea in his\nhead, that he sent Prince Charming straight back to the nursery.\nHowever, as that was where the Prince liked best to be, he laughed more\nthan ever and was not in the least bit ashamed of himself.\n\nNow, Prince Charming was known to be so light-hearted and so careless,\nthat all the flowers and all the animals told him their secrets; for it\nis always safe to tell a secret to some one who is not taken seriously\nby other people.  And the Prince, for his part, delighted in talking to\nthe flowers and the animals, because they never reminded him that he\nwas eleven years old, nor told him to stop laughing as all the other\npeople did, the people who were too clever to worry their heads about\nflowers and animals at all.  So the Prince soon jumped out of the\nnursery window into his own little garden, where his name was written\nseveral times in mustard and cress, and where the tiger lilies fought\nwith the scarlet poppies because they had been planted one on the top\nof the other, and where the guinea-pigs and the rabbits and the white\nmice ran wild and did what they liked.  He took a very large\nwatering-can and watered himself and a very small rose tree for the\nthird time since sunrise, and then sat down and looked at the mould on\nhis fingers.\n\n\"How funny everything is,\" said Prince Charming, laughing heartily.  \"I\nhave done nothing but water my rose tree, and yet all my fingers are\ncovered with mould!  Now, the Prime Minister might water fifty rose\ntrees and he would never get a speck of mould even on his shoe buckles.\nI suppose it is because the Prime Minister has learnt to be serious.\nOh dear!  I do wish I had an idea in my head!\"\n\n\"What are you saying?\" asked the rose tree, shaking off the effects of\nthe Prince's overwhelming attentions.  \"Why do you wish to have an idea\nin your head?\"\n\n\"Just to see what it would feel like,\" answered the Prince.  \"I don't\neven know what an idea is.  Do you?\"\n\n\"An idea,\" replied the rose tree in a superior tone, \"is what somebody\nremembers to have heard somebody else say.\"\n\n\"I shall never have an idea, then,\" said Prince Charming; \"for I never\nremember what anybody says.  Is there no other way of getting an idea?\"\n\n\"To be sure there is,\" answered the rose tree; \"but very few people\nknow of it.  You can go to the Red Rock Goblin, if you like, and get a\nwhole new idea for yourself.  He has quantities of ideas, piled up in\nheaps; but very few people succeed in getting one.\"\n\n\"I shall never succeed, then,\" said the Prince; \"for I am the stupidest\nboy in the world.\"\n\n\"That doesn't matter,\" said the rose tree.  \"The Red Rock Goblin does\nnot care much about clever people, I fancy.  Go and try.\"\n\n\"I think I will,\" said the Prince.  \"It is sure to be amusing, at all\nevents.  What must I do to get there?\"\n\n\"It is of no use to do anything,\" answered the rose tree.  \"If you are\nthe right sort of boy you will find yourself there, that's all.\"\n\nEvidently, Prince Charming was the right sort of boy; for as he looked\nat the rose tree, it grew larger and larger, and redder and redder,\nuntil it was no longer a rose tree at all, but just a large, square,\nred rock.  The little Prince was so amused at the transformation that\nhe burst out laughing; and when he looked round and found that the\ngarden and the palace had disappeared too, and that he was standing in\nthe middle of nothing at all, he laughed even more than before at the\nabsurdity of it all.\n\n\"Hullo!\" said a voice from inside the square red rock.  \"What are you\nlaughing at?\"\n\n\"I am laughing at everything,\" said the little Prince.  \"I always laugh\nat everything; but that may be because I haven't an idea in my head.\"\n\n\"I am glad to hear that,\" said the voice.  \"Most of the people who come\nhere have so many ideas of their own that I take good care not to let\nthem steal one of mine.  However, step inside, and you shall have one\nof my very best ideas.\"\n\nThe Prince could hardly be said to have accepted this invitation, for\nhe had no time to move before he found himself transported to the\ninterior of the rock; and there he stood in the middle of a large,\nsquare room, that hung dimly lighted by a red lantern from the roof.\nThe Red Rock Goblin sat facing him, at a little round table.  He had a\nbushy red beard that trailed on the ground, and in his mouth was a long\npipe from which rings of red smoke slowly curled up towards the roof.\n\n\"Do you feel afraid?\" asked the Goblin, blowing a particularly long\nthin line of red smoke into the air, which curled round and round the\nlittle Prince until he could hardly breathe.  He could still laugh,\nhowever; and directly he did that, the red smoke cleared away again and\nraced up to the roof, as though it were frightened at the very sound of\nthe Prince's laugh.\n\n\"I'm not at all afraid, thank you,\" said Prince Charming.  \"My\nProfessor says that I am far too stupid to understand the meaning of\nfear.  Besides, what is there to be afraid of?\"\n\nThe Red Rock Goblin waved his long, red, bony hand towards the shelves\nthat covered the four walls.\n\n\"Those shelves are packed with new ideas,\" he said.  \"Most people are\nafraid of new ideas.\"\n\n\"How stupid of them!\" said the Prince, beginning to whistle.  \"A new\nidea must be more amusing to play with than an old one, I should think!\"\n\n\"Of course it is,\" answered the Goblin.  \"That is what new ideas are\nfor.  However, as you don't seem afraid, I will find you a new idea to\nplay with.\"\n\nHe put his pipe on the table, and fetched a pair of steps, and climbed\nup to the highest shelf of all.  When he came down again, he held a\nsmall bottle in his hand, which he uncorked; and from this he poured\nsomething into a red metal bowl on the table.  Immediately a delightful\nsmell of pine woods and strawberry jam and sea-air and hot cakes and\nchrysanthemums filled the air; and the Prince drank it in and laughed\nwith pleasure.\n\n\"Ah!\" he cried suddenly, putting his hand to his head, as the contents\nof the bottle fizzed and bubbled in the red metal bowl and the smell of\npine woods and all the other things grew stronger.  \"So it is all\nbecause the sun shone crookedly on my christening day!\"\n\n\"Just so,\" answered the Red Rock Goblin, looking intently into the red\nmetal bowl.  \"That is why all the gifts of Fairyland, which ought to\nhave been yours, were given to Little Wisdom.  Now, if you were to go\nstraight off and find Little Wisdom--\"\n\n\"That's not a bad idea!\" shouted the Prince.\n\n\"Of course it isn't,\" snapped the Goblin, drawing himself up\nindignantly.  \"It is a very good idea; one of the best I have ever\nmade.  If you want a _bad_ idea, you had better go somewhere else for\nit.\"\n\nThere was nothing for it but to apologise, and this the Prince did as\npolitely as he could, saying that if he had been a little more\naccustomed to receiving ideas he would have known better how to behave\nto this one.  He then asked the Goblin to tell him the way to Little\nWisdom's home, but the Goblin answered him just as the rose tree had\ndone.\n\n\"There isn't a way,\" he said.  \"If you are the right sort of boy you\nwill find yourself there, that's all.\"\n\nThere was again no doubt whatever that Prince Charming was the right\nsort of boy, for the walls of the square red rock fell down as flat as\nthe walls of a card house, and he found himself walking in a beautiful\ncherry orchard, with bright green grass under his feet and showers of\nwhite blossoms falling softly from above, with a blue and grey sky\noverhead, and the sound of bees in the air.  Under the largest cherry\ntree sat a solemn little girl in a stiff white frock, with a large red\nsunshade spread over her.  The Prince looked at her doubtfully.  If she\nhad been an ordinary little girl in a pinafore, with a laugh in her\nvoice, he would have asked her to play with him at once; but it was\nimpossible to be as friendly as that with a little girl in a stiff\nwhite frock.  What he finally did was what he always did when he was in\na difficulty--he began to laugh.  The little girl only stared at him\nmore solemnly than before; and for the first time in his life Prince\nCharming felt that laughing was a little out of place.\n\n\"Will you come and play with me, Little Wisdom?\" he said, taking off\nhis crown and making her his best court bow.\n\n\"I never play,\" answered the little girl, who possessed all the gifts\nof Fairyland.\n\n\"That is a pity,\" observed the Prince, \"for it is the only thing worth\ndoing.  What do you do all day if you don't play?\"\n\n\"I think,\" answered Little Wisdom, gravely.  \"I think about everything\nin the world; and when I have come to the end I begin all over again.\"\n\n\"How queer!\" said the Prince.  \"I have never thought about anything in\nmy whole life.  It is much better to laugh.\"\n\n\"Is it?\" asked Little Wisdom, and she smoothed out the folds of her\nstiff white frock thoughtfully.  After thinking all day long for eleven\nyears it seemed as though it might make a change to learn to laugh.\n\n\"Do you know,\" continued the Prince, \"that you have all the gifts of\nFairyland?  That is why I am the stupidest boy in the world.\"\n\n\"I know,\" said Little Wisdom without seeming at all surprised, which\nwas, of course, only natural, for when one knows everything in the\nworld there is nothing left to be surprised at.\n\n\"If the sun had shone straight on my christening day,\" said Prince\nCharming, \"I should have had all the gifts of Fairyland instead of you.\"\n\n\"I know,\" said Little Wisdom again.  It seemed to her very unnecessary\nto talk so much about things that she had always known without being\ntold.\n\n\"And if I had all the gifts of Fairyland instead of you, I should have\nlearnt to be serious,\" continued Prince Charming.\n\n\"Perhaps you would,\" said Little Wisdom.  She was beginning to wonder\nif all stupid boys were as nice as this little Prince, who seemed to\ntake it for granted that she wanted to go on talking to him.\n\n\"Of course,\" continued Prince Charming, \"I should not think of\ndepriving you of any of the gifts from Fairyland; but if you will come\nback to the palace with me and teach me how to be serious I will give\nyou the wymps' gift in exchange.  It is not a very nice present,\nperhaps,\" he added humbly, \"because it makes everybody complain of you\nso much; but it is the only gift I have to offer you.\"\n\n\"And what is the wymps' gift?\" asked Little Wisdom.  She was quite\ninterested now, for here at last was something that she did not know.\nThe Prince answered her with a peal of laughter; and Little Wisdom\nbegan to feel decidedly odd.  First of all, she felt a curious tickling\nsomewhere at the back of her head, and then a widening out of the\nthinking lines on her forehead, and then a twitching sensation round\nthe corners of her mouth, and then--but it is not difficult to guess\nwhat happened next.  It takes all the fairies in Fairyland to make a\nlittle girl wise when she is only eleven years old; but even a stupid\nlittle Prince without an idea in his head can teach her to laugh!\n\nNow, when the peasant and his wife heard their daughter laughing in the\ncherry orchard, they came hurrying out to see what could be the cause\nof such a wonderful event.  All the people in the village came running\ntoo--men and women, boys and girls, one on the top of the other; and\nthey stood round in a ring and stared, while the merry little Prince\nand the wise little girl in the stiff white frock laughed at nothing at\nall.\n\n\"What is the meaning of it all?\" asked the good people.  \"Is it the\nfairies' doing?\"\n\n\"Nothing of the sort,\" answered the Prince, again taking off his crown\nand making them all his best court bow.  \"It is only because the sun\nshone crookedly on my christening day.  That is why I have come to\nfetch Little Wisdom.  I really hope you have no objection?\"\n\nHe said this so very charmingly that everybody felt it would be most\nimpolite to object; besides, Little Wisdom had taken the Prince's hand\nand seemed to have settled the question already.  As for her parents,\nthey were overjoyed at the idea.\n\n\"After all,\" said her father, \"the child will make some stir in the\nworld.\"  His wife laughed and cried at the same moment.\n\n\"We shall lose Little Wisdom,\" she said; \"but, at least, she will learn\nto be like other children.\"\n\nPrince Charming was as usual in a great hurry, for he could never\nendure to wait for anything except his lessons; so he turned to the\nnearest cherry tree and asked it to tell him the way home.\n\n\"If you don't know the way home without being told, you are not at all\nthe right sort of boy,\" answered the cherry tree.  Of course, as we\nknow already, Prince Charming was the right sort of boy; and the very\nnext minute he marched once more into the royal palace, and by his side\ntripped a sedate little girl in a stiff white frock.\n\n\"I have found Little Wisdom,\" he announced to his parents and the court\nin general, as they sat over their afternoon tea.  \"She is going to\nstay here and play with me for ever and ever.  Isn't it fun?\"\n\n\"The boy will never be serious,\" sighed the King, although he looked\nwith approval at the solemn face of the little girl in the stiff white\nfrock.\n\n\"I will teach him to be serious,\" said Little Wisdom, \"because he has\nalready taught me how to laugh.\"\n\nBut she never did teach him to be serious, for Prince Charming did\nnothing but laugh to the end of his days.  This did not, however,\nmatter quite so much as might be supposed, for when one plays all day\nlong with some one who knows everything there is to know, one need not\nbe so very wise oneself.  And when the time came for Prince Charming to\nrule the country, the Queen who sat beside him on the throne was a wise\nand beautiful maiden in a stiff white frock.  So the Prince laughed as\nmuch as before, and the country was governed with all the wisdom of the\nfairies.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n[Transcriber's note: the HTML version of this ebook contains scans of\nthe publisher's 10-page catalogue of children's books.]","title":"All the Way to Fairyland: Fairy Stories","tradition":"myth-cosmogony","translated_text":null,"word_count":38257}