with the idea, and at once issued a proclamation to the effect that the
country should take a whole holiday until further notice. After that,
the people could not think of grumbling; they gave themselves up to
general rejoicing, and pretended, day after day, that the King was
being married, until they almost forgot that there was not even a king
in the country.
Meanwhile, King Grumbelo was riding by night and by day in search of
his beautiful, silent Princess. He rode for many months without
discovering a trace of her; but instead of growing tired of his search
he only became the more anxious to find her. One day, as he was riding
through a wood, he came upon a sweet-smelling hedge, all made of
honeysuckle and sweet-briar, so high that he could not climb it, and so
thick that he could not see through it.
"Dear me!" thought King Grumbelo, "something charming must be hidden
behind so pretty a hedge as this!" He rode along it with his mind full
of curiosity until he came to two slender, pink-and-white gates, made
entirely of apple-blossom; and through these he could see a
fresh-looking garden with green lawns and gravel paths and bright
flower-beds, and in the middle of it all a dainty little house made of
nothing but rose leaves. The King was so impatient to know who was the
owner of such a delightful little dwelling that he knocked at once on
the gates for admission; and a dragon with a singularly mild and
harmless expression appeared inside, and asked him gently what he
wanted. The King looked at him in surprise; for, although he was
decidedly small for a dragon, he was certainly much too large and too
clumsy to live in a house made entirely of rose leaves.
"Can you tell me who lives here?" asked King Grumbelo, politely; for,
as every one knows, it is always wise to be polite to a dragon however
small he may be.
"Oh, yes," answered the dragon, with a wave of his tail towards the
house and the garden; "I live here."
"Nonsense!" said the King, forgetting in his surprise to be polite.
"You could not possibly live in so small a house as that!"
"If you want to know who lives inside the house you should say so,"
answered the dragon, in an injured tone. "It is n't likely that a
well-bred dragon would live inside anything. You should be more
careful in the way you express yourself."
"Well, well," said the King, impatiently, "perhaps you can tell me to
whom the house belongs?"
"No, I can't," answered the dragon, with a smile; "because it does n't
belong to anybody, you see. It is here because it is wanted, and when
it is n't wanted any longer it will cease to be here."
"What a curious house!" exclaimed the King.
"Curious? Not at all!" said the dragon, looking injured again. "It
would be much more curious if it were to remain here when it was n't
wanted. You should n't make needless remarks."
If King Grumbelo had not been so anxious to find out who did live
inside the house he would certainly have ridden away, there and then;
but the more he looked at the beautiful garden and the charming little
dwelling of rose leaves, the more he longed for an answer to his
question. So he kept his temper with difficulty, and turned once more
to the aggravating dragon.
"Does anybody live inside the house?" he asked.
"Of course," answered the dragon. "Do they build houses in your
country to be looked at? I suppose you can't help it, but I have never
been asked so many senseless questions before."
"Answer me one more and I will go away," said King Grumbelo. "Does a
beautiful Princess, the most beautiful you have ever seen, live inside
the house over there?"
"There is no Princess in the place, be assured of that," answered the
dragon, emphatically. "I should not be here if there were; it is a
thankless task to keep guard over a Princess; it means nothing but
spells and fighting and unpleasantness, and in the end the Princess
complains that you have kept the right people away. Oh, no, nothing
would induce me to take another place with a Princess. We 've nothing
of _that_ kind here."
"Then I 'll bid you good-day," said King Grumbelo, for he did not mean
to waste any more time. Just as he was going to ride away, however,
the door of the little house opened, and out of it stepped the
sweetest-looking little lady the world has ever contained. She was so
beautiful that as she walked down the path the flowers stopped
breathing and the trees stopped gossiping; and she had such wonderful
eyes that to look at them was to know everything she was thinking
about. She glanced once at the King as he stood outside the gates of
apple-blossom, and then she turned aside without speaking a word and
passed out of sight among the flower-beds. Then the King knew that his
search was over; she was beautiful and silent enough to please him,
whether she were foolish or not; and he made up his mind on the spot
not to search any more for the disdainful Princess who had run away
from him.
"Who is she?" he asked the dragon, eagerly.
"The Lady Whimsical, to be sure," answered the dragon. "What a lot of
questions you ask!"
"Then go and tell the Lady Whimsical that if she pleases I would like
to speak with her," said King Grumbelo.
The dragon did not move.
"The Lady Whimsical never speaks," he observed. "It would really be
much wiser if you were to go away."
"I am not going away," shouted the King, growing angry. "Go and ask
her at once if she will receive me, or I will put you out of the way
for good and all!"
"Very well," said the dragon, sighing; "I suppose I must. What name?"
"King Grumbelo," answered the King, proudly.
He fully expected that the dragon would fall flat on the ground at the
mention of such an important name as his; but the dragon did nothing of
the kind.
"It is not a bit of use expecting to come in here with a name like
that," he complained. "The Lady Whimsical cannot bear anything ugly,
and she has a particular horror of ugly names. I have strict orders
never to mention an ugly name in her presence. You had really better
go away."
"I am not going away," shouted the King once more. "Go and tell the
Lady Whimsical that a great King, who has heard how charming and how
gracious she is, would like to make himself known to her."
The dragon consented unwillingly to take this message, and ambled
clumsily away among the flower-beds. When he came back, he found the
King pacing restlessly up and down.
"Can't you keep still?" growled the dragon. "Your ridiculous name is
enough to make any one giddy without--"
"What did the Lady Whimsical say?" interrupted King Grumbelo,
impatiently.
"The Lady Whimsical never says," answered the dragon drowsily, as he
curled himself up in the sun and closed his eyes; "but she will allow
you to look at her for five minutes every morning, at two hours after
sunrise."
Two hours after sunrise on the following morning, King Grumbelo was
accordingly admitted into the garden beyond the pink-and-white gates of
apple-blossom. There sat the Lady Whimsical on the doorstep of her
rose-leaf dwelling, and in front of her stood the King.
"You are the most charming person I have ever seen," declared the King.
The Lady Whimsical smiled.
"I never thought I should find any one so charming as you are," said
the King.
The Lady Whimsical smiled again.
"Nor so silent," continued the King.
The Lady Whimsical smiled for the third time.
"Nor so--" began the King, and then he paused, for he thought she might
possibly object to being called foolish, though foolish she undoubtedly
was if she did not wish him to stay longer than five minutes. As he
hesitated, the Lady Whimsical burst out laughing and ran inside her
little house of rose leaves, and banged the door in his face.
"Time's up," said the dragon, and King Grumbelo went away puzzled. He
came back again, however, at the same time on the following morning;
and there sat Lady Whimsical on the doorstep of her rose-leaf dwelling,
just as though she were expecting him.
"I have thought only of you since yesterday morning," sighed King
Grumbelo.
The Lady Whimsical smiled as before.
"I shall think only of you for the rest of my days," declared the King.
The Lady Whimsical smiled even more than before.
"Do you know why I have come all this way to find you?" demanded the
King, growing bolder.
The Lady Whimsical shook her head at him, burst out laughing, and ran
inside her rose-leaf house as she had done the day before.
Two hours after sunrise on the following morning, the Lady Whimsical
was once more seated on her doorstep, and King Grumbelo was once more
standing in front of her.
"You are so beautiful that I shall never tire of looking at you," said
the King.
Again, the Lady Whimsical only smiled.
"You are so silent that you will always allow me to talk enough for
both of us," continued the King.
The Lady Whimsical smiled once more.
"And since you are so foolish as to send me away every morning," said
the King, "you must surely be foolish enough to be the Queen of so wise
a King as myself."
The Lady Whimsical had never laughed so heartily at anything as she did
at these words of King Grumbelo; and even after she had banged the door
in his face, he could still hear her laughter as it floated out from
the windows of the dainty little house of rose leaves. Now, all this
was very amusing for the Lady Whimsical, who was quite happy as long as
she had something to make her smile; but King Grumbelo was not so well
satisfied.
It was not amusing to carry on a conversation entirely alone, and he
even began to wish secretly that the Lady Whimsical would not answer
all his questions by laughing at them. However, the Lady Whimsical
showed no signs of answering them in any other way, and at last the
King determined that he would make her speak to him just once, and
after that she might be as silent as she pleased. So, one morning,
when the dragon opened the apple-blossom gates to him as usual, he
strode up to Lady Whimsical with a resolute air.
"Lady Whimsical, I want you to come away with me and be my Queen," he
said.
She shook her head and smiled.
"Why not?" demanded King Grumbelo.
She smiled again.
"Why not?" shouted King Grumbelo at the very top of his voice.
When the Lady Whimsical shrugged her shoulders and merely smiled again,
the King lost his patience completely, which of course was an absurd
thing to do, considering that he had come all this way on purpose to
find some one who knew how to be silent.
"Will nothing induce you to speak just one word to me?" he exclaimed;
and then he ran right away from her mocking laughter, and did not even
wait to have the rose-leaf door banged in his face.
It was a very crestfallen King Grumbelo who knocked at the gates of
apple-blossom on the following morning. But no one was sitting on the
doorstep of the dainty little house of rose leaves; and King Grumbelo's
heart gave a great jump.
"Where is she?" he demanded of the dragon, who had followed him along
the path and was looking at him with his aggravating smile.
The dragon became reproachful.
"It is your fault," he complained. "I told you she never spoke; why
did n't you listen to me? You have driven her away now by your endless
questions; she has gone into her house of rose leaves, and the Wise
Woman of the Wood alone knows what will bring her out again."
King Grumbelo looked up at the dainty little house of rose leaves, and
thought he heard the sound of muffled laughter floating through the
open windows. He turned once more to the dragon.
"Where does the Wise Woman of the Wood live?" he asked. But the dragon
had curled himself up in the sun and was already half asleep.
"Don't ask so many questions," he mumbled sleepily; and King Grumbelo
strode angrily out of the garden. He mounted his horse and allowed it
to take him wherever it would, for he had no idea where the Wise Woman
of the Wood lived, and one way was as good as another. Towards
sundown, a blackbird hopped on to his horse's head and sang to him, and
something in its song so reminded the King of Lady Whimsical's laughter
that he put out his hand to caress it. No sooner did he touch it,
however, than it turned into a squirrel, and scampered away from him so
mischievously that he was again reminded of Lady Whimsical and of the
way she, too, had run away from him. He put spurs to his horse and
chased the squirrel until he overtook it, when it immediately turned
into a field mouse and sprang into a large hole in the root of an old
elm tree; and after it went King Grumbelo without a moment's
hesitation. He left his horse outside, and threw his crown on the
ground, and crept into the hole as humbly as though he had not been a
King at all. The hole opened into a long, dark passage which grew
smaller and smaller as it wound deeper into the earth, so that King
Grumbelo could scarcely drag himself along on his hands and knees. It
came to an end at last, however, and he crawled into a cavern lighted
dimly by glow-worms. The field mouse was just ahead of him, but before
he could catch it he found that it was no longer there, and in its
place stood a tall witch woman, with a voice like a blackbird's, and
eyes like a squirrel's, and hair the colour of a field mouse.
"Tell me," said King Grumbelo, eagerly, "are you the Wise Woman of the
Wood?"
"Of course I am," said the witch woman. "Do you think any one else
would have been so much trouble to catch? And now that you have caught
me, what can I do for you?"
"I want you to remove the spell from the Lady Whimsical, so that she
may be able to speak to me," said King Grumbelo. The witch woman
laughed outright.
"There is no spell over the Lady Whimsical," she said. "She can talk
as much as she pleases."
"Then why has she never spoken to me?" asked the King in astonishment.
"You wished for the most silent woman in the world," said the Wise
Woman of the Wood. "Now that you have found her, why do you complain?"
For the first time in his life King Grumbelo felt distinctly foolish.
"I made a mistake," he owned. "I don't want a silent Queen at all."
"Then go back and tell her so," said the witch woman, promptly.
"Do you think that will make her come out from her house of rose
leaves?" asked King Grumbelo.
"I should n't wonder," said the Wise Woman of the Wood; "but go and see
for yourself. There is no need to thank me, for any one who takes the
trouble to follow the Wise Woman of the Wood to her home is welcome to
what he may find when he gets there."
Indeed, before he had time to thank her he found himself once more
outside the tree, with his crown lying at his feet and his horse
standing at his side. He was in such a hurry to get back to the Lady
Whimsical, however, that he did not stay to pick up his crown, but rode
bareheaded all through the night and reached the hedge of sweet-briar
and honeysuckle precisely at two hours after sunrise.
"Dear, dear," complained the dragon; "do you mean to say you 've come
back again?"
"I have some good news for you," said King Grumbelo, jovially. "There
is no spell over the Lady Whimsical after all!"
"Of course there is n't," said the dragon, as he slowly unfastened the
gates of apple-blossom. "Did n't I tell you she was n't a Princess?"
King Grumbelo did not stay to argue the point with him, but walked
quickly up the path and stopped in front of the dainty little house all
made of rose leaves.
"Lady Whimsical," he said, very gently and humbly, "will it please you
to smile on me once more? I have discovered that you are the wisest
person in the world, and that I am by far the most foolish."
When the Lady Whimsical looked out of her window and saw the King
standing there so humbly without his crown, the tears came right into
her wonderful eyes and stayed there.
"Oh!" she cried, "I am so glad you have come back! I was afraid you
were never coming back any more."
She held out her two little hands, and the King kissed them. Then she
came running down the stairs as fast as she could; and they sat on the
doorstep side by side, and talked.
"I feel as though I should never stop talking again! Do you mind?"
asked Lady Whimsical.
"I should like nothing better," said King Grumbelo. "But first of all
I must confess to you that I have an extremely ugly name. Do you think
you can bear to hear it?"
"I know it already!" laughed the Lady Whimsical. "Do you suppose I
have n't coaxed it out of my dragon long ago? But I, too, have
something to confess to you. Do you think it will make you angry?"
"I am quite sure I shall never be angry again," declared the King.
"Then," said Lady Whimsical, looking extremely solemn, "to begin with,
I am not a Princess at all."
"As if I did n't know that!" laughed the King. "The dragon told me,
ever so long ago!"
"He did n't tell you the rest, so stop laughing and listen to me," said
Lady Whimsical, with severity. "I knew all the while who you were and
what you wanted, and I pretended to be under a spell just to tease you."
"I know that, too," said the King, triumphantly. "The Wise Woman of
the Wood told me."
"Did she tell you that I came and hid myself here on purpose, because I
heard you were looking for a Princess and I wanted you to find me?"
asked the Lady Whimsical, softly.
"Nobody told me that," answered King Grumbelo; "I guessed it for
myself."
"What will the Professor of Practical Jokes say, when you come home
without the Princess you went out to find?" she asked mischievously.
The King had no time to answer, for at that moment the Professor of
Practical Jokes--whose profession always required him to arrive
unexpectedly in places where he was not wanted--appeared at the
apple-blossom gates and answered Lady Whimsical's question himself.
"There is nothing to say," he observed. "There never was a Princess
for your Majesty to find, so of course your Majesty has n't found her."
"There never was anybody for you to find except me," added Lady
Whimsical, who was nodding at the Professor as though she had known him
all her life. "The other Princess was a practical joke, don't you see.
Do you mean to say my dragon did not tell you _that_, too?"
"Then, who are you?" asked King Grumbelo in bewilderment. The Lady
Whimsical laughed, as she had laughed every day for a month when she
banged the door in the King's face.
"Can't you guess?" she exclaimed. "Why, I am just the daughter of the
Professor of Practical Jokes!"
And the King only wondered that he had not guessed it long ago.
As they went out through the apple-blossom gates, the dainty little
house of rose leaves vanished away because it was no longer wanted, and
so did the beautiful flower-garden, and the hedge of sweet-briar and
honeysuckle, and the sleepy good-natured dragon. They had no trouble
in getting home, for the Wise Woman of the Wood had a hand in the
matter, and the road came racing towards them as fast as an express
train; all they had to do was to stand quite still and wait until King
Grumbelo's country came hurrying along, which was the most convenient
way of travelling any one could possibly invent. When the city reached
them they found they were just in time to be married, for the people
were on the point of celebrating their wedding for the hundred and
first time; so the King and Queen were married almost before they knew
it themselves, and certainly before the people discovered that somebody
was really being married at last. This, however, was not at all
surprising, for the real wedding was very much the same as all the
make-believe ones, except that it took a little longer because the King
and Queen were not so used to being married as the people were to
marrying them.
After that, every one was as happy as it was possible to be. The
country had grown so accustomed to being frivolous that it never became
serious again; and the King never made another law, because the people
were so fond of Lady Whimsical that they did everything she told them,
and therefore no laws were needed. The result of all this happiness
was that nobody in the kingdom ever grew old; and the Lady Whimsical
who sits and laughs on her throne at this very moment is the same Lady
Whimsical who sat and laughed on the doorstep of her rose-leaf house,
years and years and years ago.
[Illustration: THE LADY EMMELINA IS ALWAYS KEPT IN HER PROPER PLACE NOW]
The Doll that came straight from Fairyland
The country was celebrating the tenth birthday of the Prince
Perfection. That particular country always celebrated the tenth
birthday of its princes and princesses, but never before had it gone so
completely wild with joy. The fireworks began punctually at sunrise,
and so did everything else that was worth beginning; and the happy
shouts of the people made conversation quite impossible, except in the
royal family, which was fully accustomed to being shouted at whenever
the country had a whole holiday. The Prince had five hundred and
fifty-four birthday presents, and his Secretaries spent all their
summer holidays in writing letters to acknowledge them; and every child
in the kingdom who was of the same age as the Prince was allowed to
come to the palace gates and receive a royal smile and a large box of
barley sugar from Prince Perfection himself. In the afternoon, the
Prince drove through the streets over a carpet of flowers and smiled
without stopping; and by his side sat the little Princess Pansy, who
was not smiling at all, for she had no birthday and no presents, and
two years was a long time to wait before she, too, should be ten years
old. Still, she was so fond of the Prince Perfection that she would
not have let him guess for a moment that she felt envious of him,
although this he was in no danger of doing, for he was so brimful of
happiness that he had no time to think about his sister at all. Truly,
it is worth while to be ten years old if one is a Prince! In the
evening there was a banquet of a hundred and twenty courses, which was
the exact number of months in the Prince's life; and the two children
sat at the head of the table between their royal parents, and managed
to keep awake until the moment arrived to cut the birthday cake.
That was when the catastrophe occurred. At the moment nobody suspected
that it was going to be a catastrophe at all. It seemed the most
fortunate thing in the world that the Prince's godmother, the Fairy
Zigzag, should manage to arrive just in time to drink her godson's
health. Most people would think that a catastrophe was far more likely
to have occurred if the King and Queen had forgotten to invite the
Fairy Zigzag. That only shows how little most of us know about fairy
godmothers. The truth is that the Fairy Zigzag was not like other
godmothers at all. She did not like banquets and she did not like
noise; and she would much sooner have sent her present by post. It
would never have done, however, to refuse the Queen's invitation, for
that is what no fairy godmother has ever been known to do; so she came
at the very last minute with a very bad grace, and she meant to go away
again as soon as she could.
Bang! What a noise she made as she came down the chimney in a cloud of
blue smoke! If she had not been quite so cross she would have arrived
through the window in her best chariot drawn by sea-gulls; but she was
determined to take as little trouble as possible over the matter, and
no one could take less trouble over anything than to come straight down
the chimney.
"Oh!" said every one with a little scream; and the Prince was so
startled that he cut an extremely crooked slice of cake. As soon as
the blue smoke cleared away, however, and he saw that it was his fairy
godmother, he recovered his good manners without any difficulty, and
walked across the room to greet her.
"I am delighted to see you, dear godmother," said Prince Perfection
with his best birthday smile, which he had been saving up all day on
purpose. "Would you like to have a piece of cake?"
His parents beamed with pleasure at the charming manners of Prince
Perfection; and the little Princess rubbed the sleep out of her eyes,
and wondered how long it would take to live through two whole years, so
that she might have a birthday party and a birthday cake, and a visit
from her fairy godmother. The Fairy Zigzag, however, did not seem at
all impressed by the charming manners of her godson.
"I never eat cake," she said, without giving so much as a look at the
crooked slice of cake which the Prince was handing her on a real gold
plate. Her godson put down the cake immediately, and took up a silver
goblet filled to the brim with sparkling ginger-beer.
"You have come just in time, dear godmother, to drink my health," he
said, just as politely as ever.