very long when he is only ten years old, and it is not pleasant to have
to climb an iceberg at the end of a long walk. There was no help for
it, however, for there was the iceberg waiting to be climbed; so the
little Prince went straight at it as bravely as he could. Any one who
is accustomed to climbing icebergs will at once know how difficult
Prince Perfection found it; and he tried seven times without being able
to get up a single yard of it.
"Good-day to you," said a voice, which sounded as though it came from
the very middle of the iceberg. "Who are you, and what do you want?"
"I am so glad you have come!" exclaimed the Prince; although, for that
matter, no one had come at all. "I am Prince Perfection, and I want
what you are thinking about."
"There certainly is no accounting for tastes," observed the voice. "I
was just thinking about a real balloon that would take me wherever I
wanted to go; and what use that would be to you I cannot imagine."
The Prince did not trouble to explain what use it would be to him, for
at that very instant the balloon floated down towards him, and he
stepped into it as a matter of course. It was far more beautiful than
anything he had ever been able to imagine, however; and the movement of
it was so delicious that he fell sound asleep the moment it began to
carry him upwards; and he could not keep awake long enough even to
thank the sender of it. When he awoke, he was lying on the grass under
a silver birch tree, and in front of him was a red brick fort with
battlements and a drawbridge. It was so like the fort in which he kept
all his tin soldiers in the nursery at home that he was not at all
surprised when a sentinel without a head came out in answer to his
knock. He remembered melting off the head of that particular tin
soldier only two days before, and he was much relieved when he showed
no signs of recognising him. As the poor tin fellow had no head, this
was hardly to be wondered at.
"Make haste, and let down the drawbridge," said the Prince, banging
away at the wooden gate with his fists; "I want to see if the Lady
Emmelina is inside."
He thought he could do what he liked with his own property, but the
soldier without a head was evidently of another opinion. He did not
attempt to let down the drawbridge, and he answered the Prince in a
rhyme which he seemed to have made up for the occasion:
"What a ridiculous clatter
Over _such_ a small matter!
I was peacefully napping
When you came with your tapping;
You are vastly mistaken
If you think I've forsaken
My official position
Because no physician
Could give me a cranium
Like a pot of geranium.
And these are my orders--
No one passes these borders
Unless he is able,
In song, rhyme, or fable,
The real, true intention
Of his coming to mention!"
To be sure, it was not much of a rhyme, but it was not bad for a
soldier who had no head. When he had finished it he went away again,
and the Prince sat down disconsolately under the silver birch tree. He
felt more convinced than before that the Lady Emmelina was inside the
fort; but although he thought as much as most people would over an
ordinary arithmetic lesson, he could not think of a single rhyme.
"Good-day to you," said a voice that seemed to come from the very top
of the birch tree. "Who are you, and what do you want?"
"I am Prince Perfection, and I want what you are thinking about,"
answered the Prince, although he hardly hoped, this time, that he would
get what he wanted.
"Do you really mean it?" remarked the voice. "I was just composing a
song about a charming little lady in a white silk frock, who lives
behind that drawbridge over there. It is not very likely you can want
that!"
"Hurrah!" shouted the little Prince, standing on his head for joy.
"Then, it is the Lady Emmelina!"
"The fact is," continued the voice, without noticing the interruption,
"I always make poetry when there is nothing else to do. So does the
tin soldier. He can't help it, poor fellow, because he has lost his
head, you see. If you have lost your head you cannot be expected to
make anything except poetry."
"Have you lost your head, too, may I ask?" said the Prince, as politely
as he could put such an awkward question.
"For the time being I have no head to lose," answered the voice. "That
is how I happened to be inventing a song just as you came by. Are you
sure there is nothing else you would like better? A nightmare, for
instance, or a thunder-storm?"
The Prince was sure he would like nothing better; and the voice in the
birch tree sang him the following song, very softly:
"Here I've come as I was bidden
To seek the dolly you have hidden--
The dolly with the yellow hair,
With cheeks so pink and eyes so fair,
With hands that move and feet that stand--
The doll that came from Fairyland.
"Do you pretend you've never seen her,
The dainty Lady Emmelina?
I pray you let the drawbridge down,
I'm ten years old and I can frown!
I mean to find her--here's my hand!
I want the doll from Fairyland.
"The song I'm singing--let me mention--
Is not a song of my invention;
It comes like steamboats sometimes do,
Like real balloons and cannons too;
It comes like all that's real and grand,
All the way from Fairyland!"
"Why," said Prince Perfection, "one would almost think you had made up
the song on purpose for me!"
What the birch tree thought about it has never been known, for when the
little Prince looked up again it had gone away to nowhere at all.
The soldier without a head let the drawbridge down, when he heard the
song that had come all the way from Fairyland. The Prince did not stop
to thank him, but hastened into the fort and looked round anxiously for
the Lady Emmelina. He had very little difficulty in finding her,
however, for she occupied nearly the whole of the ground floor. She
was sitting up against the wall, supported on one side by an ambulance
waggon, and on the other by a camp-fire which, strange to say, had not
even singed her elegant fan, although it burned with the brightest of
red and yellow flames.
"There you are! Will you come home with me?" said the Prince, rather
nervously; for he was not much bigger than she was, now, and he was a
little afraid lest she should have unpleasant recollections of the neat
round hole lined with green moss. To his relief, she seemed quite glad
to see him.
"To be sure I will," said the Lady Emmelina. "I should not be fit to
be seen if I stayed much longer in this dusty old place!"
So they went home together, and of course that did not take them long,
for the way home is always the shortest way in the world. To begin
with, the balloon was waiting for them as they came out of the fort;
and it carried them all the way to the sea-shore before they had time
to notice that they were in a balloon at all. When they reached the
sea-shore they found that the steamboat was waiting for them, too; and
the steamboat landed them on the opposite side of the sea even before
they knew that they had stepped out of the balloon; and after that the
Prince never knew what did happen, for the next thing he noticed was
that he had grown to his proper size again, and was standing once more
in the royal nursery with the Lady Emmelina tucked under his arm.
There at the table in the middle of the room sat the little Princess
Pansy, and in front of her was a large bowl of bread and milk.
"Oh! Oh! You have come back at last!" cried the Princess, jumping
down from her chair. "I am so glad, I am so glad!"
"I thought you would be glad to see her again," said Prince Perfection,
and he handed her the doll from Fairyland.
"I didn't mean _that_!" exclaimed the little Princess. And then, sad
as it is to relate, they both forgot all about the Lady Emmelina; and
the next minute, she found herself lying face downwards on the floor,
while the Prince and Princess hugged each other. And it was of no use
for the royal nurses to talk about bread and milk, for not a thing
would the two children touch until they had talked as much as they
wanted.
"You will not cry any more, now that you have the Lady Emmelina to play
with, will you?" said Prince Perfection, who, strange to say, did not
feel in the least bit jealous of the Lady Emmelina as long as she lay
face downwards on the floor.
"I don't think I want to play with the Lady Emmelina much," answered
Princess Pansy. "I think I would rather play with you. It has been so
dull while you have been away." For, although the Prince did not know
it, he had been away for a whole month.
"I am delighted to hear it," cried the little Prince. "Let us play at
Royal Executioner, and _you_ shall be executioner."
"Oh, no," said the little Princess. "I would _much_ sooner be
executed."
As they disputed the point politely, the grasshopper suddenly jumped in
at the window and nodded at them.
"Good-day to you," he said. "I was just thinking at that moment about
a steamboat and a cannon and a real balloon. Strange, wasn't it?"
Immediately the Prince found a steamboat in his right hand and a cannon
in his left; while outside the window floated a charming balloon, just
large enough for himself and Princess Pansy.
"Wait a minute," cried the Prince, as the grasshopper jumped on to the
window-sill again. "I want to tell you all about--"
"No need to do that," chuckled the grasshopper. "You don't suppose
I've been a crab and a gorse bush and an iceberg and a silver birch
tree for nothing, do you?"
That time he really hopped away to nowhere at all, and the children
have never seen him since. This does not matter in the least, however,
for they are not likely to want his help again; the Lady Emmelina is
always kept in her proper place now, and the Princess is no longer
bewitched by her. It is only reasonable to suppose that the Fairy
Zigzag had something to do with the change in the Lady Emmelina, but
the Fairy Zigzag says that she never troubled herself about it at all.
However that may be, the children have never had an unhappy moment
since Prince Perfection went out into the world to find the doll that
came straight from Fairyland.
[Illustration: "WILL YOU COME AND PLAY WITH ME, LITTLE WISDOM?"]
THOSE WYMPS AGAIN
There was great consternation in Fairyland, for it was suddenly
discovered that the sun had been shining crookedly all the morning. It
was consequently two hours later than anybody thought it was; and this,
as it happened, was a very serious matter, for all the fairies had been
invited to the christening of the little Prince Charming, and it would
never do for them to arrive late. Of course, the wymps were at the
bottom of it and the sun had no idea that he was not shining quite in
his usual way; but no one in Fairyland had time to trouble about that,
and, without waiting even for the butterflies to be harnessed, away
flew all the fairies in a regular scurry. Now, even fairies are apt to
do stupid things sometimes, especially when they are flustered and the
wymps have been at work; so there may be some excuse for what they did
on that particular morning. The fact is, they were so anxious to
arrive in time to give their christening presents to the royal baby,
that when they met a christening party coming along the road they never
stopped to see whether it was the right christening party or not, but
just flew down and presented their gifts to the baby, one after
another, as fast as they could speak.
"I give you beauty," said one. "And I, thoughtfulness," said another.
"And I, wisdom," said a third. "And I, patience," said a fourth. "And
I, contentment," said a fifth; and so on, until all the gifts of
Fairyland had been given to the baby in the nurse's arms. Then, when
they had quite finished speaking, the poor, flurried little fairies
discovered that the baby was the daughter of a poor peasant and his
wife, while Prince Charming lived in quite another country, a very long
way off. It was a great calamity, no doubt, but nothing could be done,
for the fairies had no more gifts left; so they returned very sadly to
Fairyland, and hoped that the wymps would not find it out. Of course,
the wymps did find it out, for they had arranged the whole thing from
the very beginning. Still, the wymps are not nearly so bad as they
pretend to be; and when they had finished laughing over their joke they
did their best to make things right again by going in large numbers to
Prince Charming's christening. They behaved very noisily when they got
there; and they ate every bit of the christening cake and ended in
giving the baby Prince the only nice gift the wymps have the power to
give; and that is the nicest gift in the world, for it is called
Laughter. To be sure, there had never been such a topsy-turvey
christening party before; but all the guests enjoyed it thoroughly, and
that cannot be said of all the parties to which the fairies are
invited. The Fairy Queen could not help smiling when she heard what
happened. "Never mind!" she said. "Some day, Prince Charming shall
have all the gifts of Fairyland, too. Meanwhile, he has something far
better than we should have given him."
The peasant's daughter grew up as beautiful and as wise as all the
gifts of Fairyland could make her. Everything she did was as well done
as the cleverest people in the world, all put together, could have done
it; and everything she said was as wise as the contents of all the
books in the King's library. When she cooked the Sunday dinner, she
made it taste like a banquet of twenty courses; she had only to look at
the flowers in the garden, and they bloomed as luxuriantly as though
they had been brought straight from Fairyland. She helped all the
village people when they were in a difficulty, for her advice was the
very best that could be had; and they soon forgot that she was only a
child, and they called her "Little Wisdom" instead of the ordinary name
by which she had been christened. She loved to sit by herself in the
cherry orchard, and she wondered how the other children could laugh and
play when there was so much thinking to be done. She never laughed nor
played herself, for the fairies had been so anxious to make her wise
and beautiful, that they had not thought of giving her anything so
ordinary as happiness. Every one envied her parents for having such a
wonderful daughter; but for all that the peasant and his wife were not
satisfied.
"It is a great pity," grumbled her father, "that all the gifts of
Fairyland should have been wasted on a girl. If the child had been a
boy, now, she would have made some stir in the world."
"For my part," sighed her mother, "I would gladly see her lose all the
gifts of Fairyland if she would only laugh and cry like other children."
In the meantime the little Prince Charming was growing up without the
help of a single gift from Fairyland. Never had the palace contained
such an idle, careless little Prince; he laughed at everything that
happened, morning, noon, and night; he played tricks on all his
Professors instead of learning his lessons, and he could not keep grave
long enough even to say the alphabet. He was so determined to look on
the bright side of everything, that when people were angry with him he
thought it was only their way of being amusing; and when they tried to
punish him, he found it such a good joke that they very soon gave up
the attempt. The people, one and all, loved the merry little Prince
who laughed at life from his royal nursery and refused to grow any
older; but the King viewed the matter in quite another light.
"What will become of the country," said his Majesty, "if the boy does
not learn to be serious?"
"He is so happy," said the Queen, apologetically. "Is not that enough?"
The King evidently thought it was not nearly enough, for he despatched
a page at once to fetch Prince Charming from the nursery. The Prince
came whistling into the room, with his hands in his pockets, which was
not a princely way of behaving, to begin with.
"You are eleven years old," began the King, solemnly.
"Everybody tells me that," said the Prince, smiling gaily. He supposed
grown-up people could not help saying the same thing so often; at all
events he did not mean to let it trouble him.
"It is time you learned to be serious," continued the King, still more
solemnly.
"To be serious? What is that? Is it a new game?" asked Prince
Charming, eagerly.
"Hush!" whispered the Queen, anxiously. "It is what every one has to
be,--the Prime Minister, and the Head Cook, and everybody."
"Surely," laughed the little Prince, "if so many people are occupied in
being serious there is no need for me to bother about it!"
"You cannot even read," said the King, frowning.
"No; but my Professor can," said Prince Charming. "He can read the
longest words in the dictionary without taking breath. When any one in
the kingdom can read so beautifully as that, it would surely be
impolite to try to imitate him!"
"The poorest children in the kingdom know far more than you do," said
the King, who was rapidly losing patience.
"Then there are plenty of people to tell me everything I want to know,"
smiled the Prince. "What is the use of knowing just as much as
everybody else? There would be nothing left to talk about."
The King looked at the Queen in despair.
"It is not the boy's fault," said the Queen soothingly; "you see, the
fairies did not come to his christening."
"And the wymps did," sighed the King. "I suppose that is why we have a
stupid son without an idea in his head."
Prince Charming took off his crown and felt his head very carefully.
"What is an idea?" he asked. "And why have I no idea in my head? Have
you got one in your head, father?"
The King was so angry at being asked whether he had an idea in his
head, that he sent Prince Charming straight back to the nursery.
However, as that was where the Prince liked best to be, he laughed more
than ever and was not in the least bit ashamed of himself.
Now, Prince Charming was known to be so light-hearted and so careless,
that all the flowers and all the animals told him their secrets; for it
is always safe to tell a secret to some one who is not taken seriously
by other people. And the Prince, for his part, delighted in talking to
the flowers and the animals, because they never reminded him that he
was eleven years old, nor told him to stop laughing as all the other
people did, the people who were too clever to worry their heads about
flowers and animals at all. So the Prince soon jumped out of the
nursery window into his own little garden, where his name was written
several times in mustard and cress, and where the tiger lilies fought
with the scarlet poppies because they had been planted one on the top
of the other, and where the guinea-pigs and the rabbits and the white
mice ran wild and did what they liked. He took a very large
watering-can and watered himself and a very small rose tree for the
third time since sunrise, and then sat down and looked at the mould on
his fingers.
"How funny everything is," said Prince Charming, laughing heartily. "I
have done nothing but water my rose tree, and yet all my fingers are
covered with mould! Now, the Prime Minister might water fifty rose
trees and he would never get a speck of mould even on his shoe buckles.
I suppose it is because the Prime Minister has learnt to be serious.
Oh dear! I do wish I had an idea in my head!"
"What are you saying?" asked the rose tree, shaking off the effects of
the Prince's overwhelming attentions. "Why do you wish to have an idea
in your head?"
"Just to see what it would feel like," answered the Prince. "I don't
even know what an idea is. Do you?"
"An idea," replied the rose tree in a superior tone, "is what somebody
remembers to have heard somebody else say."
"I shall never have an idea, then," said Prince Charming; "for I never
remember what anybody says. Is there no other way of getting an idea?"
"To be sure there is," answered the rose tree; "but very few people
know of it. You can go to the Red Rock Goblin, if you like, and get a
whole new idea for yourself. He has quantities of ideas, piled up in
heaps; but very few people succeed in getting one."
"I shall never succeed, then," said the Prince; "for I am the stupidest
boy in the world."
"That doesn't matter," said the rose tree. "The Red Rock Goblin does
not care much about clever people, I fancy. Go and try."
"I think I will," said the Prince. "It is sure to be amusing, at all
events. What must I do to get there?"
"It is of no use to do anything," answered the rose tree. "If you are
the right sort of boy you will find yourself there, that's all."
Evidently, Prince Charming was the right sort of boy; for as he looked
at the rose tree, it grew larger and larger, and redder and redder,
until it was no longer a rose tree at all, but just a large, square,
red rock. The little Prince was so amused at the transformation that
he burst out laughing; and when he looked round and found that the
garden and the palace had disappeared too, and that he was standing in
the middle of nothing at all, he laughed even more than before at the
absurdity of it all.
"Hullo!" said a voice from inside the square red rock. "What are you
laughing at?"
"I am laughing at everything," said the little Prince. "I always laugh
at everything; but that may be because I haven't an idea in my head."
"I am glad to hear that," said the voice. "Most of the people who come
here have so many ideas of their own that I take good care not to let
them steal one of mine. However, step inside, and you shall have one
of my very best ideas."
The Prince could hardly be said to have accepted this invitation, for
he had no time to move before he found himself transported to the
interior of the rock; and there he stood in the middle of a large,
square room, that hung dimly lighted by a red lantern from the roof.
The Red Rock Goblin sat facing him, at a little round table. He had a
bushy red beard that trailed on the ground, and in his mouth was a long
pipe from which rings of red smoke slowly curled up towards the roof.
"Do you feel afraid?" asked the Goblin, blowing a particularly long
thin line of red smoke into the air, which curled round and round the
little Prince until he could hardly breathe. He could still laugh,
however; and directly he did that, the red smoke cleared away again and
raced up to the roof, as though it were frightened at the very sound of
the Prince's laugh.
"I'm not at all afraid, thank you," said Prince Charming. "My
Professor says that I am far too stupid to understand the meaning of
fear. Besides, what is there to be afraid of?"
The Red Rock Goblin waved his long, red, bony hand towards the shelves
that covered the four walls.
"Those shelves are packed with new ideas," he said. "Most people are
afraid of new ideas."
"How stupid of them!" said the Prince, beginning to whistle. "A new
idea must be more amusing to play with than an old one, I should think!"
"Of course it is," answered the Goblin. "That is what new ideas are
for. However, as you don't seem afraid, I will find you a new idea to
play with."
He put his pipe on the table, and fetched a pair of steps, and climbed
up to the highest shelf of all. When he came down again, he held a
small bottle in his hand, which he uncorked; and from this he poured
something into a red metal bowl on the table. Immediately a delightful
smell of pine woods and strawberry jam and sea-air and hot cakes and
chrysanthemums filled the air; and the Prince drank it in and laughed
with pleasure.
"Ah!" he cried suddenly, putting his hand to his head, as the contents
of the bottle fizzed and bubbled in the red metal bowl and the smell of
pine woods and all the other things grew stronger. "So it is all
because the sun shone crookedly on my christening day!"
"Just so," answered the Red Rock Goblin, looking intently into the red
metal bowl. "That is why all the gifts of Fairyland, which ought to
have been yours, were given to Little Wisdom. Now, if you were to go
straight off and find Little Wisdom--"
"That's not a bad idea!" shouted the Prince.
"Of course it isn't," snapped the Goblin, drawing himself up
indignantly. "It is a very good idea; one of the best I have ever
made. If you want a _bad_ idea, you had better go somewhere else for
it."
There was nothing for it but to apologise, and this the Prince did as
politely as he could, saying that if he had been a little more
accustomed to receiving ideas he would have known better how to behave
to this one. He then asked the Goblin to tell him the way to Little
Wisdom's home, but the Goblin answered him just as the rose tree had
done.
"There isn't a way," he said. "If you are the right sort of boy you
will find yourself there, that's all."