"That is easily answered," said the minstrel, soothingly. "It was because I wished you to hear nothing but beautiful sounds all your life."
"But what sounds do you call beautiful?" demanded his son.
The minstrel smiled. "Can you not hear my music?" he asked.
"Yes, yes," said deaf Robert; "but what else?"
It had never struck the minstrel that there need be anything else, and he hesitated a little. "Well," he said at last, "can you not hear the sounds of the forest?"
Deaf Robert looked up at the pine-trees overhead and down to the flowers at his feet. "I used to be able to," he said sadly, "but even the forest has grown silent now." Then he clenched his fists and looked imploringly at his father. "Must I live to the end of my days without hearing any of the things that other boys hear?" he cried.
"You are a little unreasonable, my son," said the minstrel. "Are not the beautiful sounds of life enough for you?"
"Enough?" said deaf Robert. "I want much, much more than that, father. Why, I want to hear the Princess cry!"
"That is nonsense!" exclaimed the minstrel. "Tears make a most unpleasant sound, and you would be extremely disappointed if you were to hear the Princess cry."
The minstrel's son drew himself up proudly. "You do not understand; you are not real either," he said. "The tears of my Princess make the sweetest sound in the world, and I am not going to rest until I learn how to hear it." Then he turned and walked through the gate and out into the forest once more.
The minstrel looked after him and sighed. "It was the best gift I could think of," he murmured; "it was the one I would have chosen for myself. It is true," he added thoughtfully, "that I never wanted to play with a King's daughter."
The minstrel's son wandered aimlessly through the forest,—the forest that he had once liked so well because it was all his, and that he only liked now because he had found his little Princess in it; and there he might have been wandering still, if he had not suddenly met a wymp. This was not really surprising in that particular forest, for it was just the kind of forest in which any boy of fourteen might at any minute meet a wymp; but for all that, deaf Robert was just a little bit startled when the wymp suddenly dropped in his path from the tree above and nodded at him.
"Hullo!" said the wymp. "What is the matter with you?"
"I am very unhappy, because I am not a real boy," explained deaf Robert.
"Dear me! How is that?" asked the wymp, pretending to be surprised.
"Well, you ought to know," answered deaf Robert. "It is all because the wymps came to my christening."
"Nothing of the sort!" cried the wymp, indignantly. "It is all because your father insisted on knowing better than we did, and we let him have his own way. If the wymps had not been at your christening, you would not even want to be a real boy. So you cannot hear the Princess cry, eh? That's a good wympish joke, that is!" And the wymp stood on his head and choked with laughter.
"It is all very well for you to laugh," complained the minstrel's son. "You don't know how unpleasant it is to be a boy without being a real boy."
The wymp came down on his toes again and stopped laughing. "Then why don't you go and learn to be a real boy?" he asked in surprise.
"How can I find out the way?" asked deaf Robert.
"You ridiculous boy!" exclaimed the wymp. "Why, the first person you meet will be able to tell you that!"
Deaf Robert had no time to thank him for his information, for the wymp began turning somersaults the moment he had finished speaking, and he went on turning them until he turned into nothing at all, and there was no more wymp to be seen. Then the minstrel's son walked on through the forest; and for three days and three nights he met no one at all, but on the morning of the fourth day he came to the very edge of the forest, and there he saw an old woman sitting by the side of a blackberry bush.
"Hurrah!" cried deaf Robert, waving his cap. "Do you know that you are the first person I have met, and that you are going to tell me how to become a real boy?"
"I will tell you at once," said the old woman, smiling, "for you come straight to the point and do not beat about the bush. This is what you must do, then:—something brave and something kind and something foolish and something wise. If you are not a real boy after that, it will be your own fault!" Then she walked round the blackberry bush and disappeared; and although deaf Robert forgot what she had just said about him and beat about that bush in good earnest, he never saw any more of her.
Then the minstrel's son walked straight on in search of a brave deed to do; and this did not take him long, for there are always plenty of brave deeds waiting to be done by some one. So, long before the sun was above his head that day, he came to a castle where a beautiful Princess was being kept captive by a cruel old giant,—all because he was cruel, and for no other reason at all. And when deaf Robert saw the Princess weeping behind the bars of her prison window, he was reminded of his own little Princess whom he had left weeping on the nursery floor; and that made him call on the giant instantly to come out and be killed. The giant laughed a great laugh and came out into the courtyard, not to be killed, but to kill the minstrel's son instead; but before he had time to do that, the minstrel's son had managed to kill him, and there was an end of the cruel old giant.
"That is the bravest deed I have ever seen done!" cried the Princess, when he fetched her out of her dungeon.
"Brave deeds are easily done, then," said deaf Robert; but he was glad enough, all the same, to hear that he had done the first part of his task. The next thing he did was to take the beautiful Princess back to her own country; and that seemed to him a great waste of time, for he could not certainly do his kind deed so long as he had the Princess on his hands. But when they reached her country and the Princess told her father how deaf Robert had come out of his way to bring her home, the old King was pleased, and asked him what reward he would like for his trouble. "For," he said, "you have done the kindest deed any one could possibly think of."
"No reward for me!" laughed deaf Robert; "for there is my kind deed done without my knowing it!" And off he set once more on his travels.
After that, the minstrel's son wandered about for a great many days; for neither a wise nor a foolish deed could he find to do. Sometimes, when he thought he had been wise, the people told him he was cruel, and drove him out of their country; and sometimes, when he was sure he had been foolish, they only praised him for his kindness. He grew tired and footsore, and his clothes became old and ragged, and he almost forgot that he had once been a Marquis and Playfellow-in-chief to a princess. But he never forgot how the little Princess Prunella had looked, as she sat on the nursery floor and wept with sobs that he was not able to hear. So two years passed away, and still he had not learned how to be a real boy.
One day, as he walked along a country road, he came upon a girl driving cows.
"Why are you looking so sad?" she asked him.
"Because I left my Princess crying in her nursery two years ago, and I have been away from her ever since," answered the boy, simply.
The girl burst out laughing. "Well," she exclaimed, "that was a foolish thing to do!"
"Foolish?" shouted deaf Robert. "Did you say foolish?"
"To be sure I did," laughed the girl. "Could anything be more foolish than to keep away from some one whom you want to be with?"
"Then I will go back to her this very instant," declared the minstrel's son.
"And that would be the wisest thing you could do," answered the girl; and she immediately disappeared, cows and all, which just shows that she must have been a wymp all the while.
"Well," said deaf Robert, "there are my wise and my foolish deeds done together, and now I am a real boy!"
Then off he set homewards as fast as he could go; and although it had taken him two years to come away from home, it only took him two hours to get back again, so it is clear that the wymps must have had a hand in that, too. And just about tea-time he stood outside the nursery door in the palace of his own little Princess.
It is well to remember that the wymps had come to the christening of the minstrel's son; otherwise it might seem a little wonderful that the Princess Prunella should have pricked her finger again, on the very day that her Playfellow-in-chief came back to her. Anyhow, that is what had happened; and as the minstrel's son stood outside the door and listened, he heard the softest and the sweetest and the prettiest sound he had ever heard in his life.
"Hurrah!" he cried. "At last I can hear the Princess cry!" And he burst open the door and ran into the room, all in his rags and his tatters, and knelt down to comfort the King's daughter.
"Only look at my finger," wept Princess Prunella, as she showed him her little hand. Truly, it was impossible to tell which of her small white fingers the Princess had pricked, but as the minstrel's son kissed every one of them in turn, it is clear that he must have healed the right one; and that, of course, was why the Princess stopped crying at once.
Then she looked at her old playfellow and laughed for joy to see him there again. "The wonderful look has come back into your face," she said, "but it is ever so much more wonderful than before!"
"Dear little playfellow," whispered the minstrel's son, "I can hear the forest sounds again, too; but you were right all the time, and the sounds of the town are much more charming than the sounds of the forest."
"Oh, no," declared the Princess. "There you are quite mistaken, for the sounds of the forest are more beautiful by far."
And it is a fact that they have been disputing the point ever since.
The Palace on the Floor
Prince Picotee had just built a fairy palace on the nursery floor, and he sat back on his heels and looked at it with pride. Surely, no one had ever built so fine a palace before in the space of thirteen minutes and a half! Not only were there two lofty towers that soared proudly upwards until they were actually as tall as the Prince himself, but there was a great arched doorway as well, with a flight of steps leading down from it away under the nursery table; and there was even a drawbridge, made of a single big brick and suspended by a piece of string. All this, however, might be found in anybody's palace; what made the Prince's palace different from every one else's was just the way the windows were built. They were not built in rows, like ordinary windows, so that any one could guess how dull and square the rooms were inside; but they appeared here and there as if by accident, sometimes at a corner, sometimes on the top of another window, sometimes under the battlements, wherever, in fact, the little builder-Prince had felt inclined to put a window; and the most wonderful thing of all was that, however much he tried to peep through them, he could not possibly see what the rooms were like beyond. So the palace he had built himself was full of beautiful halls and rooms and passages that no one would ever be able to see.
"No doubt," exclaimed Prince Picotee, "this is the most wonderful palace that ever was built!"
Just then Dimples, the Prime Minister's little daughter, ran into the room. "How absurd!" she cried. "Why, it isn't a real palace at all!"
"It is real enough for me," said Prince Picotee. "When I am grown up and a king, I shall have a palace exactly like this to live in."
Dimples came and sat on the floor by the Prince. "I shouldn't like to live in a palace that would tumble down directly you pulled out the bottom brick," she observed, placing her fat little finger on the brick as she spoke.
The Prince seized her hand hastily. "There will be no girls in my palace," he said with dignity; "it is only girls who want to pull down other people's palaces."
Dimples put her head on one side and examined the palace afresh. "How untidy your steps are!" she remarked. "The top one is shorter than the others, and there is a join in the middle of the second one."
The Prince felt a little hurt. "It is not my fault if the bricks are not all the same length," he said. "Besides, those things do not matter. Only look at my beautiful windows!"
Dimples looked, and burst out laughing. "What funny windows!" she exclaimed. "Why, you can't see into the rooms! What is the use of having a palace when you don't know what it is like inside?"
"You don't understand," answered Prince Picotee. "Anybody can see inside an ordinary palace; this is a particular palace, you see."
Dimples did not see at all; so she changed the conversation. "What are all those soldiers doing on the table?" she asked.
"They are not on the table," explained the Prince. "They have been marching since yesterday morning, and they are on the road to my fairy palace." He then began to station his soldiers on the battlements of the two lofty towers.
"I suppose you think your wooden soldiers are real, too!" laughed the Prime Minister's daughter.
"Hush!" whispered the Prince. "If you speak so loud, they will hear you, and it would never do for them to know that you called them wooden. Anything might happen to you if you made them really angry!"
"You are only talking nonsense," said Dimples, which was what she always said when she did not understand what the Prince meant. At the same time she could not help being struck by the look on the face of the soldier that Prince Picotee had just picked up. It was the captain of the little regiment; and as the Prince placed him at the post of danger on the bottom brick of all, she felt sure that she saw a flush of anger on his painted wooden cheeks and a gleam of mischief in his round black eyes. "He is only a toy soldier," said Dimples, tossing her head; but she did not say it aloud, and it is certain that she felt a little uncomfortable, all the rest of that day, about the look on the captain's face.
Now, Dimples had come to stay with the Prince for a few days, and it happened that the room in which she slept was next to the royal nursery; and right in the middle of the night—which, as every one knows, is the time for wymps and fairies to be about—she awoke suddenly with a most unpleasant start. There, by the side of her bed, stood one of the Prince's wooden soldiers, shouldering his wooden gun as though he had never done anything else for the whole of his life,—which was certainly the truth,—and holding himself just for all the world as though he were glued together. He was certainly a most military-looking soldier, and if Dimples had not been a particularly brave little girl, she might have been decidedly frightened.
"What do you want?" she asked, sitting up and rubbing her eyes.
"Follow me. Prince's palace. Captain's orders," said the little soldier, in three jerks; and he turned round and marched stiffly towards the door. His tone was hard; but then, of course, his voice, like everything else about him, was made of wood. Dimples made no fuss about obeying him, for she was always ready for an adventure; so out of bed she jumped without any more ado, and followed him into the next room. It took them several minutes to get there, because the soldier walked so very slowly; but this, again, was not surprising, for people with wooden legs cannot be expected to walk as fast as ordinary folk.
When they reached the nursery, Dimples gave a cry of surprise. It was evident that the Prince's palace had sprung upwards since the afternoon, for the two towers were now far above her head, while as for the drawbridge, by the time she had crossed it and mounted the magnificent flight of steps, she found herself quite out of breath. "Perhaps it is a real palace, after all," she said doubtfully.
"Don't mutter. Bad manners. Captain's prisoner," said the soldier in three jerks, as before.
Dimples did not answer, for at that moment she stepped inside the Prince's palace and was too breathless with excitement to utter a word. It was indeed no ordinary hall in which she found herself; it was built entirely of oak beams of different lengths, so that in one place the ceiling was low and in another place it was high, in one corner there were several doors, and in another there were several windows; here an arch tottered perilously over an opening, and there a solitary pillar blocked up the whole of a doorway. It was truly a wonderful palace, as the Prince had said, but it was a little surprising at first sight. Dimples, however, had no time to think about it, for at that moment a stern voice was heard coming from below the floor of the hall.
"Bring the prisoner here!" said the voice. Dimples looked through a hole in the floor,—which was not difficult, as the floor was full of holes,—and there, on the bottom brick of all, stood the toy captain.
"Come along. Bottom brick. Captain waiting," said her guide; and with some little difficulty—for it is not easy to jump from beam to beam when one is accustomed to solid floors—she scrambled after him and arrived in front of the terrible captain.
"Oho!" said the captain, grasping his sword as tightly as he could,—which was very tight, as it happened, because his fingers were glued to it,—"who is the real person now, you or I?"
The question was a puzzling one, but Dimples did her best to answer it truthfully. "Well," she said, "I suppose you are real, though I didn't think so before; and I suppose I am real, too; but it is rather confusing, isn't it?"
"Not at all confusing," said the captain, a little rudely it must be owned. "It is quite clear that I am real, of course; but as for you—why, you are not even painted!"
"No," said Dimples, as politely as she could, "I am not painted, and I don't think I want to be painted, thank you. Why, I should never feel safe for a moment if I had a face that anybody could wash off with a sponge!"
At this the toy captain was so furious that he shook with anger from head to foot.
"Do you know," he said, "that I have only to pull out the brick on which I am standing, and the whole palace will tumble down on your head?"
"Of course I know," laughed Dimples, who was growing less frightened every minute; "but if you do, it will tumble down on your head as well as mine."
"That is true," said the toy captain, "but I am a real person and I am made of wood, so it will make no difference to me."
Dimples was obliged to own that there was something in what the captain said; and as she disliked nothing so much as being beaten in an argument, she at once pretended not to be listening.
"Oh, dear, how hungry I am!" she said, yawning.
"If you were real and not made up," said the toy captain, "you would never get hungry at all." However, he called out to a soldier, who was mounting guard on the top of a pillar just over his head, and ordered him to bring the prisoner some food. In a few minutes, Dimples found herself in front of a curious meal, served on round cardboard dishes and consisting of one red jelly, two raw mutton chops, a bunch of grapes, and a slice of salmon.
"But they won't come off the dishes, will they?" asked Dimples, who had fed her dolls for years on the very things that were now placed before her.
"Of course not," said the toy captain. "They would have been lost long ago if they had not been stuck on. What more can you want? If you were a real person, as you pretend to be, your appetite would be taken away by the mere sight of dishes like those!"
This, in fact, was what had already happened to Dimples, for there was nothing very enticing about a jelly from which she remembered sucking the paint only a week ago; while as for the other things, even her youngest and favourite doll was beginning to grow tired of their monotony. So she made no objection when the captain ordered the dishes to be removed.
"Now you have satisfied your hunger," continued the captain, "I will order you to be taken upstairs to the dungeon."
"Upstairs!" exclaimed Dimples. "What a funny place for a dungeon!"
"Funny? Not in the least!" said the captain, severely. "In a palace of this kind you must take the rooms as you find them. You will find the dungeon squeezed between the drawing-room and the kitchen, at the very top of the left-hand tower. There you will have to stop until the King comes."
"Who is the King?" asked Dimples, curiously.
Before the toy captain had time to answer, the band of the regiment struck up an inspiriting march. To be sure, there were only two wooden drummer boys and two wooden trumpeters, of whom one had lost his trumpet and was therefore obliged to blow continually through his stiffened fingers; but for all that they made quite a cheerful noise, and in the middle of it the King mounted the steps and entered the palace.
"Hurrah! The King! It is the King!" shouted the whole regiment in twenty wooden voices.
"The King!" repeated Dimples. "Why, it is the Prince!"
"Don't talk nonsense," said the captain, gruffly. "Do you suppose we would allow ourselves to be commanded by a mere Prince? This is a real King, I can tell you, though he isn't made of wood, more's the pity!"
And when Dimples saw the dignified way in which the little King walked into the palace, she could not help agreeing that he was a very real King. Indeed, she found it difficult to believe that he was nothing but her playfellow, the Prince Picotee, for never before had she seen him look so happy and so triumphant. There was no doubt that the little King had found his kingdom; and Dimples, remembering that she was really his prisoner, began to wish that she had not teased him so much about his toy palace and his toy soldiers. But the King did not even see her; he walked straight into the great hall and then stood still and drew a long breath of satisfaction.
"It is the most wonderful palace that ever was built," he murmured to himself; "it is much, much more wonderful than I thought."
Then his eyes fell upon Dimples, who was trying to hide behind the stiff figure of the toy captain, on the bottom brick of all.
"What is that girl doing in my palace?" asked the King, frowning.
"Please your Majesty, it is your Majesty's prisoner," answered the captain,—"she is waiting for your Majesty to decide on her punishment."
"What has the prisoner done?" asked the King in as dignified a manner as he could assume, considering that he stood on a tottering brick at the edge of the abyss in which the captain and his prisoner awaited him.
"Please your Majesty, she was heard to say that your Majesty's army was not a real army, and that I, your Majesty,—I was nothing but a toy soldier!" said the captain; and he again shook with anger from head to foot, which, after all, was the only way he could shake, because he was made all in one piece.
"Send the prisoner here," commanded the King. "It is not safe to keep a prisoner on the bottom brick—especially when she is a girl."
So Dimples, wishing from the bottom of her heart that the little playfellow she had teased had not been suddenly changed into a king, clambered up again into the hall.
"Prince Picotee," she said in an anxious undertone, as soon as she was near him, "I do think it is a real palace now, I do really!"
"Why, it's only Dimples!" exclaimed the King, and he nearly tumbled off the edge of the floor in his surprise. Then he remembered that he was a king, and tried to become dignified again, which, of course, was exceedingly difficult now that the Prime Minister's daughter was there to see. As for Dimples, she had not played with the Prince all her life for nothing, and she quite ceased to be frightened of him as soon as she came face to face with him.
"If you let that nasty captain punish me, I'll tell them all you are only a little boy and not a king at all," she whispered; and her round little face twinkled with merriment.
The King wavered. "I always said I would have no girls in my palace," he murmured sorrowfully.
"Will you promise?" persisted Dimples.
The King avoided her eyes. It was very hard not to give in and smile too, when Dimples looked like that. After all, he reflected, if Dimples was a girl and did not understand things properly, she made an excellent playfellow; and the most wonderful palace in the world might grow a little dull if there were only wooden soldiers to share it with. So the King made up his mind, and took the prisoner by one hand and waved his other in a royal manner to the captain.
"I will talk it over with the prisoner," he announced, "so do not let us be disturbed. And you need not take any more prisoners without consulting me," he added hastily, for he really feared that his nurse might be the next prisoner, and then, where would be the fun of being a king at all?
"Now, let us go and explore your palace," said Dimples, impatiently; and the captain was left on the bottom brick to get over his disappointment.
It would be impossible to describe how the two children wandered over the fairy palace that the Prince had built; how they climbed from one floor to another; how they dropped from arch to pillar; how they wound their way in and out of delightful passages, finding fresh secret rooms as they went; how from one window they looked down on the vast nursery tableland and from another caught a glimpse of the towering rocking-horse; how they quite forgot they were King and prisoner, and stood at last, hand in hand, on the battlements of the highest tower and told each other what fun it was to play in a real fairy palace.
The toy captain, however, had not forgotten anything; and when he saw them talking in this familiar manner on the battlements—which he could easily do from his position on the bottom brick, so cleverly was this wonderful palace built—he felt it was high time to interfere.
"Has your Majesty decided how to punish the prisoner?" asked the toy captain, holding himself in his very stiffest manner and raising his voice sufficiently to be heard on the battlements.
The King looked at the prisoner, and the prisoner laughed at the King.
"Well," said Dimples, demurely, "has your Majesty made up his mind?"
"Oh, don't!" whispered his Majesty, crossly. "You know I can't behave like a king if you laugh at me!" Then he folded his arms and looked down at the captain. "I have decided not to punish the prisoner at all," he said solemnly.
"What!" cried the captain, furiously. "You are not going to punish the prisoner at all?"
"No," said his Majesty, growing bolder; "and what is more, I am going to have you beheaded for interfering in the King's private affairs!"
Even Dimples felt a little nervous when she saw the look that crept over the captain's face.
"Oh, dear," she whispered to the Prince, "that is how he looked yesterday when I said he wasn't real. Would it not be wiser to make friends with him?"
But her little playfellow was looking as he had looked when he first entered his palace. "A king," he said grandly, "makes neither friends nor enemies. The captain is only my toy, and I can do as I will with him."
The captain's fury knew no bounds when he overheard this. "That is what comes of having a king who is not made of wood," he said. "But you have forgotten one thing, your Majesty!"
"And what is that?" asked the King, smiling.
"The bottom brick," said the toy captain, as he stooped and pulled it out.
Truly, there had never been such a shatter and a clatter and a tumble as when the toy captain pulled out the bottom brick of the Prince's palace! And in the midst of it all the children felt themselves falling and falling and falling. And louder than it all sounded the mocking laughter of the toy captain.
"Some people would say it was only a dream," observed Prince Picotee, the next morning, as they stood over the ruins on the nursery floor.
"It can't have been a dream," answered Dimples, who was always practical, "because here is the head of the toy captain."
"And here," added the Prince, bending down, "is his body. So he was beheaded after all!"
"I wish," sighed Dimples, "that it could all come over again."
"It will some day," the Prince assured her, "when I am King and have built another palace like this one."
"But I shall not be there," pouted Dimples, "because you won't have any girls in your palace."
Prince Picotee kicked the headless captain about the floor thoughtfully. "Well, I'm not quite sure," he said, growing a little red. "Perhaps I'll have one girl."
"Will you?" laughed Dimples. "But what if she pulls down your wonderful palace?"
"Ah," said Prince Picotee, gravely, "I shall not tell her about the bottom brick!"
The Lady Daffodilia
No one in the whole kingdom was so idle, or so careless, or so thoughtless as the Lady Daffodilia. The only thing she had done ever since she was born was to grow and grow and grow, so that, although she was only twelve years old, she was quite as tall as the Countess, her mother. In fact, she was tall enough to be conceited about it, which, of course, was extremely foolish of her, for she had certainly had nothing to do with it herself.
"You are a whole year older than I am, but I am a head taller than you," was what she said to Prince Brilliant, when he came to play with her, one day. She was perched on the garden wall at the time, so she was able to look down on the little Prince even more than usual.
"Hush!" said the Countess, who was drinking tea on the lawn. "That is not the way to speak to a Prince."
Prince Brilliant stuck his chin into the air and tried to make the most of his height.
"I don't care a bit," he said; "I wouldn't have silly long legs like yours for anything. It's much better to know things; and only think of all the things I know that you never heard of! You couldn't even say the exports and imports of Fairyland without looking in the book first; now, could you?"
"Hush!" said his Queen-mother, who was also drinking tea on the lawn. "That is not the way to speak to a little lady."
The Lady Daffodilia stooped a little, and smoothed out the creases in her black silk stockings, just to show that she had not forgotten how much longer her legs were than the Prince's. The Prince pretended not to see.
"What you say is very true," then said Daffodilia, who was always fair, even when she was most aggravating; "but I am better off than you, all the same. I can go and look in the book if I want to know all those tiresome stuffy things you think such a lot about; but all the books in the world won't make you so tall as I am!"
The Prince was much annoyed, for there was no doubt that the Lady Daffodilia had the best of the argument. He aimed a most unprincely kick at a harmless geranium plant, that, like the Lady Daffodilia, had never done anything in its life but grow; and he turned very red in the face.
"You're only a girl," he said; "and girls think too much of themselves. That's what my Professor says!"
"If you were a girl," laughed the Lady Daffodilia, "it would not matter about your being such a little bit of a thing! Is it not very unpleasant to be so short, when you are a boy?"
The Prince turned and walked quickly towards the garden gate. It was true that he was a prince, and could not therefore be rude to the Lady Daffodilia; but he was a boy, too, and if he had stopped another minute he was quite certain he would have lifted her down from the wall and given her a good shaking.
"Where are you going?" she cried after him, and laughed more than ever when she saw how cross she had made him.
"Where are you going?" echoed the Queen and the Countess.
Prince Brilliant turned when he reached the gate, and faced them all with a resolute look on his small, round face.
"I am going to find out the way to grow tall," he said. "I shall not come back until I am as tall as the Lady Daffodilia."
Then he went through the gate and slammed it behind him, and marched away down the hot, dusty road. The Queen and the Countess only smiled, for they did not suppose he had gone for good; but the Lady Daffodilia slipped down from the wall and on to the grass lawn, and began to weep.
"I have sent away my favourite Prince," she sobbed, "and I shall never have him to play with again."
"Do not cry, little daughter," said the Countess, soothingly; "your Prince will come back soon."
"You do not know him so well as I do," said Daffodilia. "He always means what he says; and since it is quite certain that nothing can ever make him as tall as I am, it is quite certain that he will never come back any more."
It seemed as though her words were likely to come true, for the Prince had not returned by bedtime; and, although the King's messengers rode out that very night and hunted the whole country up and down for days and weeks and years, not a trace was ever found of the little Prince who had gone to learn the way to grow tall. So the kingdom was left without an heir to the throne, and the Lady Daffodilia was left without a playfellow. It was not her way, however, to sit down and cry about it, besides which she had found something really important to do at last.
"If the Prince has gone away to grow as tall as I am," she said, "I will stay at home and grow as clever as he is!"
So she shut herself up in the Count's library with a pile of dusty books, and tried her very best to learn the exports and imports of Fairyland. But as fast as she learned one she forgot the other; and she ended by completely jumbling them up, which was really a serious matter, for it is quite evident that the things we give to Fairyland are not at all the same things as Fairyland gives to us. And then, long before the Lady Daffodilia had grown as clever as the Prince, the people came and clapped her into prison, "for," they said, "it is your fault that the heir to the throne is lost." It is true that they did not put her into a very unpleasant prison, for it was a nice, comfortable old castle, in the middle of a green plain; but there was no one to play with and no one to tease, so it was most decidedly a prison. Added to this, the Lady Daffodilia seemed to have stopped growing at last, for she never grew another inch after the Prince went away; and as this robbed her of her only occupation, she began for the first time in her life to long for something to do. And she grew so tired of looking at the same green plain day after day, that she determined to make it into a garden for a change; and the flowers and the shrubs were so proud of being planted by such dainty, white hands that they tried their very hardest to grow up nicely and be a credit to her; and the result was that the little lady in the castle soon became known as the most wonderful gardener in the kingdom.
Now, when Prince Brilliant ran away from the Lady Daffodilia he found the road so hot and so dusty that he was obliged to keep near the hedge at the side; and he had not run very far before he pushed his head through a very elegant spider's web. The spider was exceedingly cross, and grumbled; but the daddy-longlegs that tumbled out of her web was very much pleased with himself.
"Well, my little friend," he said to the Prince, "where are you running so fast, this fine morning?"
Now, one of the things the Prince had learned from his Professor was the way to speak to a daddy-longlegs, so before another five minutes had passed he had told him the whole of his trouble. "Do you know the way to make your legs grow long?" asked the Prince at the end of his story.
"Well," said the daddy-longlegs, "that is certainly one of the things I am generally supposed to know; but if I show you the way, do you think you will have patience to do everything I tell you? It may take a very long time."
"I can wait years and years and years and years," said the Prince, in his determined way; and the daddy-longlegs had the sense to see that he meant what he said.
"Right you are," he said. "Then jump straight into that hedge; and the more spiders' webs you break on the way, the better—nasty, choky, stuffy things!"
"What shall I do when I get there?" asked the Prince.
"Oh, you haven't got to do anything," said the daddy-longlegs, with a chuckle. "Just wait there until I come to you."
"All right; but you won't be long, will you?" said the Prince; and he tucked his crown under his arm and shut his eyes tight and jumped straight into the thorny, prickly hedge.
When he opened his eyes, he found himself in a strange new country, that was all made of rose-coloured dreams, and filled with rose-coloured air, and lighted with rose-coloured sunbeams. There were no people or trees or mountains or rivers to be seen; but before the little Prince had time to notice this, his mind was filled with rose-coloured thoughts, and so he forgot the Lady Daffodilia and his own crossness and everything that had made him unhappy when he was in the real world.
"Hullo! Where am I?" he cried.
"You are in the world of dreams, to be sure," said a voice in his ear. "Where else should you be at your time of life?"
"But who lives here?" asked Prince Brilliant.
A great many voices answered him. "We live here, of course," they said. "We are really nice dreams, we are; and when children are the right sort, like yourself, they come here to stay with us until they are grown up."
"May I play with you, then?" asked the Prince. In the real world he had been too fond of books to play much, but here he felt as though he must do nothing but play all day long.
"Of course you may," answered the dream voices; "that is what you are here for."
Prince Brilliant was soon the happiest boy possible. Some people might think it dull to have playfellows who could not be seen, but the Prince thought nothing could be more delightful than to live in the midst of dreams for the rest of his life. It is true that he was fast forgetting everything that his Professor had taught him; but this was hardly surprising, for there is no room in a very small head for serious thoughts as well as rose-coloured ones.
It is doubtful whether the Prince would ever have wanted to go back to the real world again, if he had not met the daddy-longlegs one day, as he was strolling along with his favourite dream.
"Hullo!" said the daddy-longlegs, chuckling. "I see it is time for you to go back into the real world."
"What, already?" exclaimed the Prince. "Why, you said I should have to wait years and years and years and——"
"You have been here exactly seven years," interrupted the daddy-longlegs; "and it is time for you to meet the waking-up dream."
The Prince suddenly began to remember things. "When shall I be as tall as the Lady Daffodilia?" he cried. But the daddy-longlegs had no time to do anything but chuckle before the waking-up dream came and seized hold of the Prince, and he found himself falling, falling, falling—down, down, down—until he dropped with a thud on a soft grass lawn, and found himself in the middle of the most beautiful garden in the world. A little way off stood an old grey castle; and as he lay looking at it the gate swung open, and out stepped a dainty, winsome little lady.
The Prince sprang to his feet with a shout and held out his arms; and the Lady Daffodilia ran straight into them without stopping so much as to think.
"How did you learn to grow so tall?" she asked, looking up at him.
"Well," said the Prince, truthfully, "I just went into the world of dreams and waited till I was grown up. You see, I was a boy and not a girl, all the time; so I was not in such a hurry as you to get my growing done early."
"I tried to grow as clever as you," sighed Daffodilia, "but nothing would stop in my head. I couldn't even say the exports and imports of Fairyland without looking in the book first!"
"Never mind," laughed the Prince; "I don't believe there are any imports, for I am sure we have nothing good enough to send there. And as for the exports, there is only one thing that Fairyland has sent into this country that is worth remembering."
"And what is that?" she asked anxiously.
"It is something that is not very tall and not very serious and not very wise," answered the Prince; "but it is sweet and merry and charming, and it is called the Lady Daffodilia!"