little Princess was being brought up, was a very different kind of
place. It was full of happy people, who made as much noise as they
pleased, and laughed when they were glad, and cried when they were sad,
and never bothered about anything at all. And the chickens ran in and
out of the cottages with the children, and the birds sang all the year
round, and the sun had never been known to stop shining for a single
minute. It was the jolliest country imaginable, for nobody interfered
with anybody else, and the King never made any laws at all, and the
only punishment that existed was for grumbling. It is true that there
was hardly any conversation, for everybody talked at once and nobody
heard what anybody else said; but as it was not often worth hearing,
that did not matter in the least. Everybody was happy and jolly, and
that was the great thing.
Little Sunny the Princess grew up without knowing that she was a
Princess at all; and nobody else knew that she was a Princess either;
and even the Queen had almost forgotten that she was a King's wife.
That was nobody's concern though; and they lived in the tiniest cottage
of all, and Sunny romped with every girl and boy in the place and was
loved by them all. They had called her Sunny because she could look
straight at the sun without blinking, which was more than the boldest
of them could do; and it was such a good name for her that she was
never called anything else. Besides, nobody knew her real name, and as
it is much too long to be mentioned here, and as the Queen had
forgotten it long ago, it really is of no consequence at all.
One fine day, Sunny sat up in the chocolate tree, listening to one of
the stories that Honey the gardener's son was so fond of telling her;
and Honey the gardener's son lay on the grass below, and tried to catch
the chocolate drops with which she was pelting him.
"Why are all your stories so much alike, Honey?" asked Sunny the
Princess. "Why does the Prince always go out into the world to find a
Princess? Why should n't the Princess go and find the Prince, for a
change? I wish I was a Princess; I would start to-morrow. What fun!"
She laughed her very happiest laugh and found an extra large chocolate
drop and threw it into his mouth. Honey laughed as well as any one
could laugh with a chocolate drop in his mouth, and tried to think of
an answer to her question. Honey was not his real name either, but it
was the one they had given him because he knew the language of the
bees, as, indeed, every true son of a gardener should.
"Perhaps the stories are wrong," he said. "I only tell them to you as
I have them from the bees. Or perhaps none of those particular
Princesses ever wanted to go out into the world to find anybody."
"Or perhaps," added Sunny, "they were just found before they had time
to look for a Prince themselves. Do you think that was it? Anyhow, I
don't want to wait for a Prince, for Princes never come this way at
all; so I am going out into the world to seek my own fortune, and I
shall start this very moment!"
She jumped down from the chocolate tree as she spoke, and danced round
Honey, clapping her hands with excitement. Honey was not surprised,
for nobody was ever surprised at anything in that country, but he was
just a little bit sad.
"And I shall ask the first Prince I meet if he will come back with me,"
continued Sunny; "just as the Princes always ask the Princesses in the
stories. He won't know I am not a Princess, will he? And you won't
tell him, will you, Honey dear?"
"I shall not be there," said Honey the gardener's son. "I don't think
I want to look for a Princess; and I certainly cannot leave my garden."
"Oh," said Sunny, and she was almost grave for an instant. "But I will
come back some day, when I have found my Prince, and then you shall be
my gardener," she went on consolingly. "And you don't mind my going
without you, do you, Honey dear?"
"The Princes in the stories always went alone," answered Honey.
So that was how Sunny the Princess went out into the world, without
knowing that she was a Princess. And of course everybody in the
village missed her; but the Queen, her mother, and Honey, the
gardener's son, missed her most of all. Before she went, however,
Honey taught her a song which she was to sing if she ever found herself
in trouble; and this was the song:--
"Friends of Honey,
Come to Sunny;
Whizzing, whirring,
Stillness stirring,
Sunlight blurring;
Friends of Honey,
Fly to Sunny!"
and this she learned by heart before she started.
Now, she travelled a great many days without meeting with any
adventures at all. It was such a delightful country that everybody was
pleased to see her, and she never had any difficulty in getting enough
to eat, for she had only to smile and that was all the payment that
anybody wanted. But one day, as she was walking through a wood, a
great change suddenly came over everything. Every sound was hushed,
and the birds stopped singing, and the wind stopped playing with the
leaves; there was not a rustle or a movement anywhere, and the sun had
gone behind a cloud. In the whole of her short life the little
Princess had never seen the sun go behind a cloud, and she felt
extremely inclined to cry. The further she went, the darker and
gloomier it grew, and at last she could not bear it another minute; so
down she sat by the side of the road and wept heartily.
"Hullo! you must stop that noise or else you will be banished," said a
voice, not very far on. Sunny was so astonished that she stopped
crying at once and looked up to see a little old man with a white beard
staring at her. He was a very sad-looking little man, and his mouth
was drawn down at the corners as though he had been on the point of
crying all his life and had never quite broken down.
"Why must I stop?" asked Sunny. "If you feel unhappy you _must_ cry,
must n't you?"
"Dear me, no," said the sad little man, in a tone of deep gloom. "I am
always unhappy, but I never cry. The whole country is unhappy, but
nobody is allowed to cry. If you cry, you must go away."
"What a funny country!" cried Sunny, and she at once began to laugh at
the absurdity of it.
"Don't do that," said the little man, in a tone of still greater alarm.
"If you go on making any fresh noises, you will get beheaded. Why
can't you be quiet? You can do anything you like, as long as you do it
quietly."
"May n't I laugh?" exclaimed Sunny. "What is the use of feeling happy
if you may n't laugh?"
"It is n't any use," said the sad little man. "Nobody ever is happy in
this country. Nobody ever has been happy since the King was bewitched
and the sun went away in a temper, and that was sixteen years ago.
Nobody ever will be happy again, unless the spell is broken; and the
spell cannot be broken until a Princess of the royal blood comes this
way, without knowing that she is a Princess."
"How absurd!" said Sunny. "As if a Princess could be a Princess
without knowing she is a Princess!"
"Why not?" asked the sad little man, crossly. He had lived alone in
the dark, silent wood for such a long time that he began to find the
conversation tiring.
"Oh, because there are bands and flags and balls and banquets and
cheers and Princes and lots of fun, wherever there is a Princess,"
replied Sunny.
The sad little man looked more sad than before.
"Then the spell will never be broken," he said, miserably; "because all
that noise would be stopped at once. If you have done talking you had
better go, or else we shall both be banished; and I advise you to take
off those wooden shoes of yours, unless you want to be clapped into
prison. But, first of all, tell me if you can look straight at the sun
without blinking."
He always asked that of every little girl who came his way, in case she
should happen to be a Princess; for he was really a very wise little
man in spite of his sadness, and he knew that only eagles, and
Princesses who did not know they were Princesses, could look straight
at the sun without blinking. And he was so tired of feeling sad
without being allowed to cry, that he longed to have the spell removed
from the country, so that he need not keep back his tears any longer.
"Why, of course I can, if there is a sun," laughed Sunny. And to her
astonishment the sad little man dropped straight on the ground, and put
his fists in his eyes, and began to cry at the very top of his voice,
just like any child in any nursery.
"Whatever is the matter?" exclaimed Sunny.
"Matter?" shouted the little man, who was shaken with sobs from head to
foot. "I was never so happy in my life! I have been longing to cry
for sixteen years."
There had certainly not been so much noise in that wood for sixteen
years. For no sooner did the old man begin to weep, than the trees
began to rustle, and the birds began to sing, and the frogs began to
croak; and over it all came a faint glimmering of white light, as
though the sun were beginning to stretch himself behind the cloud.
"What does it all mean?" demanded Sunny.
"Go on to the palace and see," sobbed the sad little man, and he
pointed out the way to her between his tears. And Sunny set off
running in her wooden shoes as fast as she could go, and there never
was such a clatter as she made when she reached the town and ran
straight through the gates and all along the streets; and on either
side of her the people fell down in heaps, from sheer amazement at
hearing such a noise after sixteen years of silence. So nobody tried
to stop her; and she ran faster and faster and faster, and the light
grew brighter and brighter and brighter, till at last she stood in the
courtyard of the King's palace. There she saw beautiful ladies in
magnificent court dresses creeping about on their bare feet, and
handsome courtiers in elegant costumes walking on tiptoe in carpet
slippers; and there was the Captain of the King's guard drilling the
soldiers in whispers, and there were the soldiers pretending to fire
with guns that had no gunpowder in them; and there was the head
coachman making faces at the stable boy because he could not shout at
him, and there was the stable boy standing on his head because he was
not allowed to whistle. And into the middle of it all came the clatter
of Sunny's wooden shoes, as she ran across the courtyard, and up the
steps, and into the palace; and down dropped the ladies in waiting in
graceful groups, and down dropped the courtiers just anyhow; and all
the soldiers fell down in neat little rows, and the Captain of the
King's guard sat down and looked at them; and the head coachman shouted
as he had wanted to shout at all his stable boys for the last sixteen
years, and the stable boy waved his cap and cried "Hurrah!" And Sunny
went clattering along the great hall, past the page boys who were
playing marbles with india-rubber marbles, and past the kitchen where
the fires burned without crackling and the kettles never boiled over,
and up the wide marble staircase, and along all the passages, until the
sound of her coming even reached the King's ears.
Now the King sat on his throne with cotton wool stuffed in his ears, in
case there should by accident be the least sound in the palace. But,
in spite of that, he heard the clatter of Sunny's shoes coming closer
and closer, and he began to feel terribly nervous lest there really was
going to be a noise at last.
"What is that noise? Take it away and behead it at once!" he said to
the Prime Minister, in his most distinct whisper. But the noise
outside was now so great that the Prime Minister could not hear a word;
and the next moment the door was flung open, and Sunny the Princess ran
into the room. And the King looked so funny as he tried to make the
Prime Minister hear his whispers, and the Prime Minister looked so
funny as he tried to hear the King's whispers, that Sunny was obliged
to laugh; and when she had once begun she found she could not stop, so
she laughed and laughed and laughed; and when the poor, nervous old
King turned again to the Prime Minister to tell him to behead some one
at once, he found that the Prime Minister was laughing too; and
immediately all the pages in the hall, and the courtiers in the
courtyard, and the cooks in the kitchen, and the townspeople in the
streets, and the children in the nurseries, were all laughing as
heartily as they could. And when the sun heard all this laughter, he
finished making up his mind immediately, and came out from behind the
cloud and shone his very best once more. So there was the sunshine
again, and there was everybody laughing, except the King.
Now, when the King found that no one was paying any attention to his
royal whispers, he began to grow angry, and without thinking any more
about it he shouted at the very top of his royal voice. And this was
so remarkable, after sixteen years of whispering, that the laughter was
instantly hushed; and even Sunny the Princess became grave, because she
wanted to see what was going to happen next.
"Who are you?" demanded the King, pointing at her with his sceptre.
"I am Sunny, of course," she said, stepping up to the throne in quite a
friendly manner. All the courtiers looked at one another and nodded.
"She is Sunny, of course," they said, just as though there could be no
doubt about it whatever.
"She is the little Princess your daughter," said a fresh voice from the
doorway. And there stood the Queen, who had not been able to stay by
herself any longer and had just come after Sunny as fast as she could.
When the King saw her, he quite forgot that she used to laugh too much,
and he came down from his throne in a terrific hurry and he kissed her
several times before the whole court; and Sunny kissed them both there
and then; and all the ladies in waiting in the room kissed all the
pages that were to be seen; and the courtiers stood in rows along the
wall and never got kissed at all.
So that was how Sunny found out she was a Princess; and there were
bands and flags and balls and banquets and cheers and Princes and lots
of fun. For that evening the King gave a magnificent ball, to
celebrate the return of his daughter Sunny; and all the Princes in the
kingdom were invited to it.
"Now," said the Queen, as she carefully put on Sunny's beautiful new
crown, "you will be able to find your Prince, as you said you would."
But Sunny shook her head and wondered why she felt so sad when
everything seemed to be going so well; and when the Queen had gone
downstairs to look after the supper, she went to the open window and
looked out into the garden. As she did so, there came a faint buzzing
and humming close at hand, and three beautiful brown bees flew down and
settled on her round white arm. And Sunny gave a cry of joy and knew
all at once why she had been feeling so lonely; and she began to sing
the song Honey the gardener's son had taught her:--
"Friends of Honey
Come to Sunny;
Whizzing, whirring,
Stillness stirring,
Sunlight blurring;
Friends of Honey,
Fly to Sunny!"
She had not nearly finished singing it before there came a distant
murmur in the still, warm air, and the murmur grew louder and louder
until it would almost have deafened any one if there had been any one
there to deafen. But the people in the palace were so occupied in
dressing for the ball that a thunderstorm would not have made any
difference to them; and as for Sunny, the sound only reminded her of
the village without a name, where she had been so happy with Honey. So
she leaned out of the window as far as she could, and waited until she
saw a dense cloud coming gradually towards her, so large that it
covered the whole of the setting sun. When it reached the palace it
hung just above it, and she could see quite plainly that it was made of
millions and millions of bees. Then the three bees which had dropped
on her round white arm floated up into the air and flew round her head
three times and went away to join the cloud of bees overhead. Sunny
knew then that they were going to do what she wanted; and she clapped
her hands and laughed, as the humming and buzzing began all over again,
and the cloud moved away as quickly as it had come. "Hurry, hurry,
dear little bees!" she cried from the palace window; and the next
moment there was not a bee left in the whole kingdom, for they had all
gone to the village without a name, in the other King's country.
Everybody wondered why the Princess was so disdainful to all the
Princes who danced with her, that night. But nobody wondered any more
when Honey the gardener's son arrived; and this really happened, only
three days later. And he came, all in his gardener's clothes; and he
walked straight into the palace, just as Sunny had done; and she met
him in the great hall, where the King and the Queen and the whole court
were having a reception to receive one another. And they both shouted
with happiness and ran straight into each other's arms; and they kissed
and kissed and kissed, and then they fell to talking as fast as they
could; and they both talked at once for three quarters of an hour,
before either of them heard a word. Then they sat down on the steps of
the King's throne, just because it happened to be there, and Sunny told
him everything that had happened to her. Nobody interfered, not even
the Prime Minister, for Sunny had done so many curious things since her
arrival that one more or less made very little difference.
"It is very dull being a Princess," said Sunny. "And I don't like
palaces much, after all; they are such stuffy places! The people who
live in them are rather stuffy, too. And there is n't a chocolate tree
in the whole of the garden; did you ever know such a stupid garden?
Oh, I am so glad you have come, Honey dear!"
"Have you found your Prince?" was all that Honey said.
"Princes are not a bit amusing," said Sunny. "There were fifty-two
Princes at the ball, the other night, but I did n't like any of them.
I am dreadfully tired of being a Princess. It is ever so much nicer in
the village, under the chocolate tree."
"Of course it is," said Honey. "We 'll go back, shall we?" And
nothing the King could say would make them see any other side to the
question. Indeed, as the Queen pointed out to him, if he had not
allowed the people to keep so many bees it might never have happened at
all. So the end of it was, that the Queen stayed with the King; and
Honey and Sunny were married that very same day and went back to live
in the village without a name. And there they built a very small house
in a very big garden, and they planted it with rows of chocolate trees,
and rows of acid-drop bushes, and lots of almond rockeries; and the
fairies came and filled it with flowers from Fairyland that had no
names at all, but were the most beautiful flowers that any one has ever
seen, for they never faded or died but just changed into something else
when they were tired of being the same flower.
So no wonder that Honey and Sunny were happy for ever and ever!
[Illustration: "COME WITH ME, POET," SAID THE LITTLE PRINCESS]
The Little Princess and the Poet
There was once a Poet whom nobody wanted. Wherever he went, he was
always in the way; and the reason for this was his inability to do
anything useful. All the people in all the countries through which he
passed seemed to be occupied in making something,--either war, or
noise, or money, or confusion; but the Poet could make nothing except
love, and that, of course, was of no use at all. Even the women, who
might otherwise have welcomed him, could not endure the ugliness of his
features; and, indeed, it would have been difficult to find a face with
less beauty in it, for he looked as if all the cares and the annoyances
of the world had been imprinted on his countenance and left it seared
with lines. So the poor, ugly Poet went from place to place, singing
poems to which nobody listened, and offering sympathy to people who
could not even understand his language.
One day he came to a city he had never visited before; and, as he
always did, he went straight to the part where the poorer people lived,
for it was all about them that he wrote the poetry to which nobody
listened. But, as usual, the poor people were so full of their
troubles that they could not even understand him.
"What is the use of telling us we are unhappy?" they grumbled. "We
know that already, and it does not interest us a bit. Can you not do
something for us?"
The Poet only shook his head.
"If I did," he replied, "I should probably do it very badly. The world
is full of people who are always doing things; the only mistake they
make is in generally doing them wrong. But I am here to persuade them
to do the right things for a change, so that you may have your chance
of happiness as well as they."
"Oh, we shall never be happy," the people said. "If that is all you
have to say, you had better leave us to our unhappiness and go up to
the King's palace. For the little Princess has been blind from her
birth, and her great delight is to listen to poetry, so the palace is
full of poets. But none of them ever come down here, so we do not know
what they are like."
The Poet was overjoyed at hearing that at last he was in a country
where he was wanted; and he set off for the palace immediately.
"Who are you, and what do you want?" demanded the royal sentinels, when
he presented himself at the palace gates.
"I am a Poet," he replied. "And I have come to see the Princess,
because she is fond of poets."
"We have never seen a poet like you," said the sentinels, doubtfully.
"All the poets in the palace have smooth, smiling faces, and fine
clothes, and white hands. Her Royal Highness is not accustomed to
receiving any one so untidy as yourself."
The Poet looked down at his weather-beaten clothes and his toil-worn
hands; and he stared at the reflection of his wrinkled, furrowed face
in the moat that surrounded the palace; and he sighed in a disappointed
manner.
"I am a Poet," he repeated. "How can a man be a poet if his face is
smooth and his hands are white? No man can be a poet if he has not
toiled and suffered and wandered over the earth, for the sake of the
people who are in it."
Just then he heard a woman's voice speaking from the other side of the
gates; and looking through them, he saw a beautiful, pale Princess,
standing there all by herself, with a look of interest on her face.
"It is the little blind Princess," thought the Poet, and he bowed
straight to the ground though he knew quite well that she could not see
him. The sentinels saluted, too, for they were so accustomed to
saluting people who never saw them at all that the blindness of the
little Princess made no difference to them.
"Tell me," said the Princess, eagerly, "the name of the man with the
wonderful voice, who is saying all those beautiful, true things."
"Please your Highness," said the sentinels, "he _says_ he is a Poet."
"Ah," cried the little Princess, joyfully, "at last you have come; I
have been waiting for you all my life! At last I have found a real
Poet, and the Queen-mother will see now that all those people in there,
who say the same things over and over again in their small, thin
voices, are not poets at all. Come in, Poet; why do you stay so long
outside?"
So the drawbridge was let down, and the sentinels saw what a mistake
they had made and did their best to pretend that they had not made it
at all; and for the first time in his life the Poet felt that he was
not in anybody's way.
"Come with me, Poet," said the little Princess, holding out her small
white hand to him. "If you will take my hand, I shall feel quite sure
you are there."
So the little blind Princess and the Poet went into the palace, hand in
hand.
"I have found a Poet," she announced to the whole court, just as it was
sitting down to luncheon.
"What! Another?" groaned the King from the top of the table. "I
should have thought five-and-forty were quite enough, considering the
demand."
"This is a _real_ Poet," continued the little Princess, still holding
the Poet's hand. "I knew him by his wonderful voice. I am so glad he
has come; and now, we can send away all the others, who are not poets
at all."
Now, this was a little awkward, for the five-and-forty poets were all
present; and being mostly the younger sons of kings, who had only taken
up poetry as an accomplishment, they were also suitors for the
Princess's hand, which made it more awkward still. So the Queen
coughed uncomfortably, and all the ladies in waiting blushed
uncomfortably, and the five-and-forty poets naturally looked
uncomfortable into the bargain. But the little Princess, who could see
nothing and never had been able to see anything, neither blushed nor
felt uncomfortable.
"Will some one give place to the Poet?" she asked with a smile.
The Queen, who was generally full of resources, felt that it was time
to interfere.
"Do not listen to Her Royal Highness," she said, soothingly, to the
five-and-forty poets. "She is so terribly truthful that she does not
know what she is saying. I have tried in vain to break her of it."