beautiful garden on this side of the sun. And if it had not been for the
wymps, she might never have known to the end of her days what the world
was like on the other side of her wall. Fortunately for every one,
however, the wymps are never far off when a charming little princess is
in trouble; and on the very day that the King's youngest son rode away
into the world, one of the nicest and the naughtiest and the wympiest
wymps of all came head first through the sun, and was sitting on the top
of the Princess's wall with his legs dangling, before she had time to
say "Oh!"
"Come now," said the wymp, "let's hear all about it." His tone was so
exceedingly friendly, and he seemed so unlikely to give her good advice,
which was all that a fairy would have done, that the Princess
Gentianella dried her eyes and told him everything. When she had
finished, the wymp stood on his head to concentrate his thoughts, and
reflected deeply.
"Will _you_ tell me what is on the other side of my wall?" asked the
Princess Gentianella, as the wymp remained in this remarkable position
without speaking. She did not know that it never makes much difference
to a wymp whether he is on his head or his heels, so she was naturally
afraid that he would make his head ache if he stood on it any longer.
However, the wymp came through the air in somersaults, when he heard the
Princess's question, and he landed in the middle of a bed of scarlet
poppies and twinkled at her.
"You won't like it, if I do," he remarked.
"I am quite positive I shall," declared the Princess; "and you are such
a particularly nice kind of wymp that you surely cannot refuse to tell
me!"
No wymp of the right sort could have resisted an appeal like that; and
as every wymp is the right sort of wymp, this particular wymp at once
did as the Princess asked him.
"All right," he said. "There isn't much to tell, though. There are the
usual rows of mountains, and the usual rivers and lakes and islands and
peninsulas and--"
"Don't!" cried the Princess, stopping up her ears with her little pink
finger-tips.
"--and isthmuses," continued the wymp, cheerfully; "and volcanoes, and
hot springs and cold springs, and palm-trees and apple-trees and
boot-trees--"
"I don't believe," interrupted the Princess, indignantly, "that there is
nothing but a stupid geography book on the other side of my wall!"
The wymp looked at her and twinkled more than ever; but when he saw that
her eyes were shining, just as her own flowers might have done at the
time of the dew-fall, he stopped teasing her at once. No one knows
better than a wymp when it is time to stop teasing.
"Hullo!" he said. "What is the matter now?"
"I thought I should see something quite different," said the Princess,
plaintively.
"So you would, my little dear," cried the wymp. "I was only telling you
what _I_ saw. Give me those two ridiculous little hands of yours, and
you shall see everything that I didn't."
This time the Princess Gentianella did say "Oh!" and she said it because
she found herself sitting on the top of her wall, with all the world on
the other side of it lying stretched out before her, for miles and
miles and miles. She did not see very much at first, though, for she
looked no further than the little corner of it that lay just under her
eyes.
"Why," said the Princess, softly, "there is a garden on the other side
of my wall. And only look, there is a real Prince in the middle of it!"
She turned round to tell her wymp all about it, but the wymp had other
work to do and was already on his way to the back of the sun. So there
was nothing for it but to look over the wall again, and this time the
Prince glanced up and saw her.
Now, Prince Amaryllis had been waiting a great many days for some one to
appear at the top of the wall, but now that some one really had appeared
there and was looking so extremely glad to see him, he suddenly found he
had nothing whatever to say to her. That is what occasionally happens to
the most charming of princes. Fortunately, however, the Princess knew
perfectly well what to say to him.
"I knew there would be something nice on the other side of my wall," she
cried. "The wymp was quite wrong, wasn't he?"
"No doubt he was, if you say so," answered the Prince, who had never
noticed the wymp at all. "But how is it, little lady, that you can see
me?"
The Princess opened her big eyes and stared at him. "How can I help
seeing you, if you are there?" she asked.
"But I'm not here, that's just it," explained Prince Amaryllis; "at
least, I am not supposed to be. You see, I have been invisible all my
life, and you are the first person, outside my own country, who has ever
been able to see me. I am very glad you can see me," he added politely;
"one gets a little tired sometimes of being heard and not seen."
"When I was a little girl," said Princess Gentianella, drawing herself
up to her full height, "I was always taught to be seen and not heard.
That was very dull, too. But tell me, why is it that you are invisible?"
"Alas!" said the Prince. "The whole of my country is invisible, too.
Tell me what you can see, Princess, from the top of your wall."
"I can see you," answered the little Princess, promptly.
"But do you see nothing else?" asked Prince Amaryllis.
The Princess shaded her eyes with her hand and looked away into the
distance. "I can see a large flat plain, with no trees and no rivers
and no people and no houses," she answered presently.
Prince Amaryllis sighed. "You are looking right into my country," he
said dolefully, "and it is every bit as full of trees and rivers and
people and houses as anybody else's country. Do you not hear anything
either?"
"Oh, yes," said Princess Gentianella; "I can hear the murmur of voices
and the ripple of rivers and the rustle of trees. I have heard those
sounds all my life, but I thought they were in the wind."
"Nothing of the sort," replied the Prince. "They are the sounds that
belong to my country, where everybody is heard and not seen. It all
began with a christening-party, a hundred years ago. My
great-grandfather was King then, and he was the most absent-minded king
that has ever ruled over us, and he forgot to ask the Witch to dance
with him, which, of course, offended her deeply. And it happened that
she was a witch who was always making experiments, so she experimented
on my country at once by making it invisible, and it has been invisible
ever since."
"How strange!" said Princess Gentianella. "I never remember hearing any
one talk about your country."
"Of course not," sighed the Prince; "you can't expect people to talk
about a thing that isn't there, can you? You have no idea how stupid it
is to live in a place that no one can see."
"But why does not someone disenchant your kingdom?" asked the Princess,
who had read quite enough history to know that kingdoms are always
disenchanted sooner or later.
"That is what I am trying to do," answered Prince Amaryllis. "The spell
can only be removed if a king's son will spend a whole year in this
waste piece of ground and make it into a beautiful garden. But although
I have been here nearly a year, I have not been able to make a single
flower grow. It is a little tiresome," he added with another sigh, "for
it is part of the spell that I shall have to be executed if I fail."
"Dear me!" exclaimed the little Princess. "You are much too nice to be
executed! Won't you let me come and play in your garden? Perhaps I might
help you to make the flowers grow."
Prince Amaryllis shook his head and smiled. "It is not a nice garden to
play in," he said. "I think I will come and play in yours instead, and
you shall teach me the way to make the flowers grow."
So the Prince jumped over the wall into the Princess's garden, and they
walked about, hand in hand, among all the bright flower-beds that the
fairies had planted there. They did not play very much, though, for they
had so many things to talk about; and they talked and talked and talked,
without stopping a moment, for the rest of the afternoon. For all that,
when tea-time came and the Prince went back into his own garden, he
remembered all sorts of things he might have said to the Princess if he
had only thought of them in time; while Princess Gentianella, in the
middle of her second cup of tea, also remembered all the things she
might have said to the Prince, only she had not said them. That is
always the way with princes and princesses who are carefully brought up.
After that, Princess Gentianella and Prince Amaryllis played together
for a number of days. But they always played in the Princess's garden,
because it was a much nicer garden to play in; and as for the Prince's
garden, they seemed to have forgotten that altogether. Then, one
afternoon, when the Princess ran out as usual into the hot sunshine, her
Prince from over the wall met her with a very disconsolate face.
"The year has come to an end," he told her, "and since I cannot make the
flowers grow in my garden, I shall have to go and be executed as soon as
the Witch sends for me."
The little Princess's lips began to quiver, and her eyes grew large and
round and shining. "It is too bad," she declared, "to execute a really
nice Prince like you!"
"Do not be distressed," replied Prince Amaryllis, in a resigned tone.
"Now that I have seen you, little lady, I shall be almost glad to be
executed."
"You are talking nonsense," declared the Princess. "Why do you want to
be executed?"
"Because, even if I knew the way to make the flowers grow," he replied,
"my country would not be disenchanted unless I married Anemone, the
Witch's daughter, as well. And, of course, I would sooner be executed
than do that!"
"What!" exclaimed the Princess; "you have promised to marry a witch's
daughter? Do you mean to say that all this while I have been playing
with somebody else's Prince?"
There was no doubt that the Princess Gentianella was extremely angry;
and the Prince could not help thinking that she was just a little bit
unreasonable as well.
"You see, it was part of the disenchantment," he explained. "If _you_
had to be invisible all your life, you would promise anything to get
disenchanted. Besides," he added, as the Princess showed no signs of
being appeased, "they told me that Anemone, although a witch's daughter,
was exceedingly beautiful."
"What difference does that make?" demanded the Princess. "You ought to
have told me before, that you were somebody else's Prince. You haven't
been playing fair!"
"It is true I forgot to mention it," said the Prince, a little crossly;
"but one cannot remember everything, you know."
Princess Gentianella gathered up her train with much dignity and turned
her back on the Prince.
"People who are as forgetful as that deserve to be invisible," she
observed haughtily; and with that she swept up the garden path and into
the palace. She lost all her dignity, however, as soon as she was out of
the Prince's sight; and it was a very doleful little Princess who came
to take tea with her royal parents that afternoon. When she even went so
far as to say that she preferred bread-and-butter to plum-cake, the
King and Queen began to be seriously alarmed.
"What is the matter with the child?" asked the Queen of the King.
"Perhaps she has a sunstroke," suggested the King, who thought that only
illness could possibly prevent a daughter of his from eating her
plum-cake at tea-time. The Queen knew better, but she waited until the
King had gone back into his study before she said anything. Then she
said the very best thing possible.
"What did you see when you looked over your wall, little daughter?" she
asked.
"There was a prince on the other side," confessed the Princess
Gentianella.
"To be sure, there was," smiled the Queen. "There is always a prince on
the other side; but why should that make you unhappy? Is he not a nice
prince?"
"He is a _real_ Prince," said her little daughter; "and I should not be
at all unhappy if he had not just told me that he is somebody else's
Prince!"
"Never mind," said the Queen, consolingly; "you will soon find another
prince in your garden."
[Illustration]
"But not _that_ Prince," wept the poor little Princess.
"One prince is much the same as another," said the Queen; but she did
not think so for a moment, and no more did the little Princess.
Now, it was quite true that Prince Amaryllis had not been playing fair,
and that his forgetfulness was enough to annoy the nicest little
Princess in the world; but for all that, he was going to be executed,
and it is difficult to be angry for long with anyone who is just going
to be executed. So, when Princess Gentianella ran out once more into the
sunshine on the following morning, she was fully prepared to make
friends with her Prince from over the wall. She was greatly disturbed to
find, however, that there was no one to make friends with; and although
she called the Prince's name several times, not an answer came from the
other side of the wall. Then the Princess Gentianella did what she had
never been brave enough to do before,--she shut her eyes and jumped; and
either she jumped higher than so small a princess ever jumped before, or
else the wall was not nearly such a high wall as she had always thought
it was, for the next moment she found herself on her two little feet in
the very middle of the Prince's garden. She was very close to the
invisible country now, and the people's voices were so loud that she
could actually hear what they were saying. This was not really
surprising, though, for they were all saying the same thing.
"Our Prince cannot make the flowers grow, and the Witch has taken him
away to be executed," was what they were saying.
When the Princess Gentianella heard that, she dropped straight down on
the ground and burst into tears, and her tears rained all over the
garden in showers; and wherever they fell, the flowers began to
grow,--first of all, snowdrops and primroses and daffodils, then red
poppies and blue larkspurs and white lilies, then hollyhocks and
nasturtiums and mignonette, and last of all, roses,--red roses, pink
roses, yellow roses, all sorts of roses. And the scent from all these
flowers was so delicious that the little Princess lifted her head at
last and looked round.
"Oh!" she cried, starting to her feet; "some one _has_ made the flowers
grow in the Prince's garden!"
"Some one certainly has," chuckled a voice from the top of the wall; and
there sat the same wymp as before, looking just as though he had never
gone away to the back of the sun at all. At the same instant, the
people's voices sounded louder than ever from the kingdom close by.
"The flowers have learned the way to grow in the Prince's garden," they
were shouting; "and the Prince will not be executed, after all!"
Princess Gentianella danced for joy, in and out of the Prince's bright
flower-beds. "The Prince will not be executed, after all," she said,
too.
"And he will be able to marry Anemone, the Witch's beautiful daughter,"
added the wymp.
All the laughter died out of Princess Gentianella's face, and she looked
up at the wymp in a very woe-begone manner indeed.
"Oh," she said piteously, "I never thought of that. I--I had quite
forgotten that he was somebody else's Prince."
The wymp fairly wimpled when he saw the poor little Princess looking so
unhappy. "Don't you fret about that, my little dear," he cried. "Do you
suppose the Witch's daughter wants anybody else's Prince, either?"
Princess Gentianella clapped her hands with delight. "Of course she
doesn't!" she cried. "But perhaps she does not know he is somebody
else's Prince."
"Then go and tell her so," suggested the wymp; and before she had time
to thank him for his advice he had gone off once more to the back of the
sun.
The little Princess did not stop to think about it, but just ran as fast
as she could towards the invisible kingdom of Prince Amaryllis. It might
seem a little difficult to run towards a place that did not appear to be
there, but to any one who was in as great a hurry as the little Princess
a thing like that was of very small consequence. So she ran and she ran
and she ran, until the Prince's kingdom was really obliged to stop being
invisible, for in all the hundred years that it had been bewitched no
one had ever tried so hard to see it before. Besides, it would have been
most impolite of anybody's kingdom to go on pretending that it was not
there, when the Princess was so determined to pretend that it was; so in
the end she suddenly found herself in the middle of a country that was
as full of trees and rivers and people and houses as any other country,
and the particular part of it in which she found herself was a nice
green field full of woolly sheep.
"What a charming kingdom!" exclaimed Princess Gentianella. "How green
the trees are, and how fresh everything looks! Why, there is not a
speck of dust to be seen."
"Of course there isn't," answered a jolly little lamb, who was trying,
as lambs will, to behave as though he had only two legs instead of four.
"Dust, indeed! When a kingdom has not been seen for a hundred years,
naturally it keeps fresher than a kingdom that any one can stare at.
Nothing fades a kingdom like staring at it, you know. However, all this
will soon be altered, for I hear that the Prince has made the flowers
grow in his garden; so all he has to do now is to marry the Witch's
daughter, and then we shall be disenchanted at last."
"Oh no, you won't!" said Princess Gentianella, shaking her finger at him
wisely.
"Why not?" asked the lamb, standing still for the first time in his
life.
"Because the Prince is _not_ going to marry the Witch's daughter,"
answered Princess Gentianella; and she ran on before the lamb had time
to recover from his astonishment.
Down a curly white road ran the little Princess, between two of the
greenest hedges she had ever seen, until she came to a stile. Now, she
had never climbed a stile in her life, so of course she did not know
what to do next. However, there stood the stile waiting to be climbed,
and there stood the Princess feeling very much inclined to cry, when it
happened most fortunately that an old woodcutter came strolling along.
He was a particularly cross-looking woodcutter, but the Princess was in
far too great a hurry to notice that.
"If you please," she said as politely as she could, "will you lift me
over this great, big, high stile?"
The woodcutter at once did as he was asked, and then was so surprised at
his own kindness that he stood and stared at the little Princess.
"Well, I never!" he exclaimed. "That's the first time in my life I ever
did anything to please anybody. Are you a witch?"
"No, but I am looking for one," said Princess Gentianella. "Can you tell
me where she is?"
"If you mean the one whose daughter is going to marry the Prince, I
think I can," replied the woodcutter, who thought he might as well go on
being kind, now that he had once begun.
"That is certainly not the witch I mean," answered the Princess,
promptly, "for the Prince is _not_ going to marry any witch's daughter!"
And she ran on faster than ever.
Presently she came to a brook that was covered with ice.
"Dear me!" cried Princess Gentianella. "It was springtime round the
corner, and here have I tumbled into the middle of winter!"
A fish popped his head through the ice, and laughed from ear to
ear,--two things that he could do quite easily, for he happened to be a
skate. "The seasons have been mixed up in this country ever since we
were bewitched, a hundred years ago," he said. "It is no use being
particular about the time of year when there is no one to see what kind
of weather you are having. If you stand on tiptoe you will see summer
going on in the next field."
"It must be very difficult to know what clothes to put on, when you take
a walk in this country," remarked the Princess. "But, of course, it
doesn't matter what you do wear when there is no one to look at you!"
"Well, well," said the skate, "things will soon be altered, and the
seasons will have to right themselves again, for I am told that Prince
Amaryllis is going to marry the Witch's daughter, and so the country
will be disenchanted at last."
"Rubbish!" laughed the little Princess, knowingly. "Don't you believe
everything you are told! The Prince is going to do nothing of the
sort!"
Then she ran away from the skate and the frozen brook, and she ran right
out of winter into the middle of summer; and she might have gone on
running until she reached the middle of autumn too, if she had not been
stopped by an enormous sea-serpent who was lying stretched across the
road. When the sea-serpent saw the Princess, of course he flapped his
fifty-five fins at her, and lashed his tail about furiously, and growled
in a hoarse, fishy voice. But the Princess mistook his fury for
politeness. When one has lived in a garden with a wall round it and
never seen a sea-serpent in one's life, one is apt to make these
mistakes.
"I am very pleased to meet you," she said, with her most charming smile;
"I have often wanted to meet a dragon."
"She calls me a dragon!" groaned the sea-serpent, foaming like the sea
in a tempest; "and I am connected with the very best family of
sea-serpents! What will people say next?"
"I am very sorry," said the Princess, humbly. "You see, I thought, as
you were not in the sea--"
"I was expecting that," interrupted the sea-serpent, bitterly. "No one
ever will believe in me unless I stop in the sea. It is very
depressing!"
"I am sure I am very glad you have come out of the sea," said the
Princess, politely, "because it has given me the pleasure of meeting
you. But does it not make you very thirsty to lie in this hot dusty
road?"
"Not nearly so thirsty as stopping in the sea and having nothing but
salt water to drink," answered the sea-serpent. "People do not realise
what a thirsty life a sea-serpent has to lead. If they did," he added
severely, "they would not stand in front of him and ask so many
questions!"
The Princess laughed merrily. "I do not want to stand here at all," she
explained; "but unless you move your tail a little on one side, I really
cannot get past."
"If you do get past," growled the sea-serpent, "you will fall into the
Witch's hands."
"That is exactly where I want to fall!" cried Princess Gentianella;
"only you must move your tail a little bit more than that, or else I am
afraid I shall step on it."
It was such a novelty for the sea-serpent to find some one who was not
frightened of him, that he had not the heart to tell her that he was
just going to eat her up. So he moved his tail out of the way, and
Princess Gentianella blew a kiss to him from the tips of her little pink
fingers and ran on as before.
The next person she met was an old woman, who was picking thistles in a
field.
"I wonder why you are doing that!" said the Princess, opening her big
blue eyes.
"I am making an experiment, to see if I can find any one with so brave a
heart that the thistles will not be able to hurt it," answered the old
woman, mysteriously.
"But does it not scratch your fingers to gather those large prickly
thistles?" asked the little Princess.
"Perhaps it does," the old woman said shortly; "but who do you suppose
is going to gather them for me?"
She seemed rather cross, but the Princess supposed it was because she
had pricked her fingers so much.
"Well, I am in a most tremendous hurry, but I think I can stop and help
you," she answered; and down she dropped on her knees and began to pick
thistles as fast as she could. And when the thistles saw what soft pink
fingers were going to take hold of them, they at once bent back all
their prickles and allowed the Princess to gather as many as she
pleased without giving her so much as a scratch. When she had filled the
old woman's apron for her, she began to run off at full speed, to make
up for lost time. But the old woman called her back.
"Stop!" she cried. "Where are you going?"
"I am going to find the Witch's daughter," answered Princess
Gentianella, looking back impatiently.
"Oh, indeed!" said the old woman. "May I ask what you want with her?"
"I want to tell her not to marry Prince Amaryllis, because he is not her
Prince but somebody else's Prince," said Princess Gentianella.
"Oh, indeed!" said the old woman again. "And whose Prince may he be,
then?"
"He is my Prince, of course!" answered the little Princess, laughing
happily; and then away she ran across the field, and into the wood that
lay beyond.
In the wood, under a hazel-tree, sat a tall and beautiful girl, weeping
bitterly.
"Oh dear, oh dear!" said Princess Gentianella, mournfully. "How
dreadfully sorry I am!"
"Why?" asked the girl, looking up at her.
"Because you are crying, to be sure," answered the Princess. "Will you
tell me why you are so sad?"