began turning somersaults the moment he had finished speaking, and he
went on turning them until he turned into nothing at all, and there was
no more wymp to be seen. Then the minstrel's son walked on through the
forest; and for three days and three nights he met no one at all, but on
the morning of the fourth day he came to the very edge of the forest,
and there he saw an old woman sitting by the side of a blackberry bush.
"Hurrah!" cried deaf Robert, waving his cap. "Do you know that you are
the first person I have met, and that you are going to tell me how to
become a real boy?"
"I will tell you at once," said the old woman, smiling, "for you come
straight to the point and do not beat about the bush. This is what you
must do, then:--something brave and something kind and something foolish
and something wise. If you are not a real boy after that, it will be
your own fault!" Then she walked round the blackberry bush and
disappeared; and although deaf Robert forgot what she had just said
about him and beat about that bush in good earnest, he never saw any
more of her.
Then the minstrel's son walked straight on in search of a brave deed to
do; and this did not take him long, for there are always plenty of
brave deeds waiting to be done by some one. So, long before the sun was
above his head that day, he came to a castle where a beautiful Princess
was being kept captive by a cruel old giant,--all because he was cruel,
and for no other reason at all. And when deaf Robert saw the Princess
weeping behind the bars of her prison window, he was reminded of his own
little Princess whom he had left weeping on the nursery floor; and that
made him call on the giant instantly to come out and be killed. The
giant laughed a great laugh and came out into the courtyard, not to be
killed, but to kill the minstrel's son instead; but before he had time
to do that, the minstrel's son had managed to kill _him_, and there was
an end of the cruel old giant.
"That is the bravest deed I have ever seen done!" cried the Princess,
when he fetched her out of her dungeon.
"Brave deeds are easily done, then," said deaf Robert; but he was glad
enough, all the same, to hear that he had done the first part of his
task. The next thing he did was to take the beautiful Princess back to
her own country; and that seemed to him a great waste of time, for he
could not certainly do his kind deed so long as he had the Princess on
his hands. But when they reached her country and the Princess told her
father how deaf Robert had come out of his way to bring her home, the
old King was pleased, and asked him what reward he would like for his
trouble. "For," he said, "you have done the kindest deed any one could
possibly think of."
"No reward for me!" laughed deaf Robert; "for there is my kind deed done
without my knowing it!" And off he set once more on his travels.
After that, the minstrel's son wandered about for a great many days; for
neither a wise nor a foolish deed could he find to do. Sometimes, when
he thought he had been wise, the people told him he was cruel, and drove
him out of their country; and sometimes, when he was sure he had been
foolish, they only praised him for his kindness. He grew tired and
footsore, and his clothes became old and ragged, and he almost forgot
that he had once been a Marquis and Playfellow-in-chief to a princess.
But he never forgot how the little Princess Prunella had looked, as she
sat on the nursery floor and wept with sobs that he was not able to
hear. So two years passed away, and still he had not learned how to be a
real boy.
One day, as he walked along a country road, he came upon a girl driving
cows.
"Why are you looking so sad?" she asked him.
"Because I left my Princess crying in her nursery two years ago, and I
have been away from her ever since," answered the boy, simply.
The girl burst out laughing. "Well," she exclaimed, "that was a foolish
thing to do!"
"Foolish?" shouted deaf Robert. "Did you say _foolish_?"
"To be sure I did," laughed the girl. "Could anything be more foolish
than to keep away from some one whom you want to be with?"
"Then I will go back to her this very instant," declared the minstrel's
son.
"And that would be the wisest thing you could do," answered the girl;
and she immediately disappeared, cows and all, which just shows that she
must have been a wymp all the while.
"Well," said deaf Robert, "there are my wise and my foolish deeds done
together, and now I am a real boy!"
Then off he set homewards as fast as he could go; and although it had
taken him two years to come away from home, it only took him two hours
to get back again, so it is clear that the wymps must have had a hand
in that, too. And just about tea-time he stood outside the nursery door
in the palace of his own little Princess.
It is well to remember that the wymps had come to the christening of the
minstrel's son; otherwise it might seem a little wonderful that the
Princess Prunella should have pricked her finger again, on the very day
that her Playfellow-in-chief came back to her. Anyhow, that is what had
happened; and as the minstrel's son stood outside the door and listened,
he heard the softest and the sweetest and the prettiest sound he had
ever heard in his life.
"Hurrah!" he cried. "At last I can hear the Princess cry!" And he burst
open the door and ran into the room, all in his rags and his tatters,
and knelt down to comfort the King's daughter.
"Only look at my finger," wept Princess Prunella, as she showed him her
little hand. Truly, it was impossible to tell which of her small white
fingers the Princess had pricked, but as the minstrel's son kissed every
one of them in turn, it is clear that he must have healed the right one;
and that, of course, was why the Princess stopped crying at once.
Then she looked at her old playfellow and laughed for joy to see him
there again. "The wonderful look has come back into your face," she
said, "but it is ever so much more wonderful than before!"
"Dear little playfellow," whispered the minstrel's son, "I can hear the
forest sounds again, too; but you were right all the time, and the
sounds of the town are much more charming than the sounds of the
forest."
"Oh, no," declared the Princess. "There you are quite mistaken, for the
sounds of the forest are more beautiful by far."
And it is a fact that they have been disputing the point ever since.
The Palace on the Floor
Prince Picotee had just built a fairy palace on the nursery floor, and
he sat back on his heels and looked at it with pride. Surely, no one had
ever built so fine a palace before in the space of thirteen minutes and
a half! Not only were there two lofty towers that soared proudly upwards
until they were actually as tall as the Prince himself, but there was a
great arched doorway as well, with a flight of steps leading down from
it away under the nursery table; and there was even a drawbridge, made
of a single big brick and suspended by a piece of string. All this,
however, might be found in anybody's palace; what made the Prince's
palace different from every one else's was just the way the windows were
built. They were not built in rows, like ordinary windows, so that any
one could guess how dull and square the rooms were inside; but they
appeared here and there as if by accident, sometimes at a corner,
sometimes on the top of another window, sometimes under the
battlements, wherever, in fact, the little builder-Prince had felt
inclined to put a window; and the most wonderful thing of all was that,
however much he tried to peep through them, he could not possibly see
what the rooms were like beyond. So the palace he had built himself was
full of beautiful halls and rooms and passages that no one would ever be
able to see.
"No doubt," exclaimed Prince Picotee, "this is the most wonderful palace
that ever was built!"
Just then Dimples, the Prime Minister's little daughter, ran into the
room. "How absurd!" she cried. "Why, it isn't a real palace at all!"
"It is real enough for me," said Prince Picotee. "When I am grown up and
a king, I shall have a palace exactly like this to live in."
Dimples came and sat on the floor by the Prince. "_I_ shouldn't like to
live in a palace that would tumble down directly you pulled out the
bottom brick," she observed, placing her fat little finger on the brick
as she spoke.
The Prince seized her hand hastily. "There will be no girls in my
palace," he said with dignity; "it is only girls who want to pull down
other people's palaces."
Dimples put her head on one side and examined the palace afresh. "How
untidy your steps are!" she remarked. "The top one is shorter than the
others, and there is a join in the middle of the second one."
The Prince felt a little hurt. "It is not my fault if the bricks are not
all the same length," he said. "Besides, those things do not matter.
Only look at my beautiful windows!"
Dimples looked, and burst out laughing. "What funny windows!" she
exclaimed. "Why, you can't see into the rooms! What is the use of having
a palace when you don't know what it is like inside?"
"You don't understand," answered Prince Picotee. "Anybody can see inside
an ordinary palace; this is a particular palace, you see."
Dimples did not see at all; so she changed the conversation. "What are
all those soldiers doing on the table?" she asked.
"They are not on the table," explained the Prince. "They have been
marching since yesterday morning, and they are on the road to my fairy
palace." He then began to station his soldiers on the battlements of the
two lofty towers.
"I suppose you think your wooden soldiers are real, too!" laughed the
Prime Minister's daughter.
"Hush!" whispered the Prince. "If you speak so loud, they will hear you,
and it would never do for them to know that you called them wooden.
_Anything_ might happen to you if you made them really angry!"
"You are only talking nonsense," said Dimples, which was what she always
said when she did not understand what the Prince meant. At the same time
she could not help being struck by the look on the face of the soldier
that Prince Picotee had just picked up. It was the captain of the little
regiment; and as the Prince placed him at the post of danger on the
bottom brick of all, she felt sure that she saw a flush of anger on his
painted wooden cheeks and a gleam of mischief in his round black eyes.
"He is only a toy soldier," said Dimples, tossing her head; but she did
not say it aloud, and it is certain that she felt a little
uncomfortable, all the rest of that day, about the look on the captain's
face.
Now, Dimples had come to stay with the Prince for a few days, and it
happened that the room in which she slept was next to the royal nursery;
and right in the middle of the night--which, as every one knows, is the
time for wymps and fairies to be about--she awoke suddenly with a most
unpleasant start. There, by the side of her bed, stood one of the
Prince's wooden soldiers, shouldering his wooden gun as though he had
never done anything else for the whole of his life,--which was certainly
the truth,--and holding himself just for all the world as though he were
glued together. He was certainly a most military-looking soldier, and if
Dimples had not been a particularly brave little girl, she might have
been decidedly frightened.
"What do you want?" she asked, sitting up and rubbing her eyes.
"Follow me. Prince's palace. Captain's orders," said the little soldier,
in three jerks; and he turned round and marched stiffly towards the
door. His tone was hard; but then, of course, his voice, like everything
else about him, was made of wood. Dimples made no fuss about obeying
him, for she was always ready for an adventure; so out of bed she jumped
without any more ado, and followed him into the next room. It took them
several minutes to get there, because the soldier walked so very slowly;
but this, again, was not surprising, for people with wooden legs cannot
be expected to walk as fast as ordinary folk.
When they reached the nursery, Dimples gave a cry of surprise. It was
evident that the Prince's palace had sprung upwards since the afternoon,
for the two towers were now far above her head, while as for the
drawbridge, by the time she had crossed it and mounted the magnificent
flight of steps, she found herself quite out of breath. "Perhaps it is a
real palace, after all," she said doubtfully.
"Don't mutter. Bad manners. Captain's prisoner," said the soldier in
three jerks, as before.
Dimples did not answer, for at that moment she stepped inside the
Prince's palace and was too breathless with excitement to utter a word.
It was indeed no ordinary hall in which she found herself; it was built
entirely of oak beams of different lengths, so that in one place the
ceiling was low and in another place it was high, in one corner there
were several doors, and in another there were several windows; here an
arch tottered perilously over an opening, and there a solitary pillar
blocked up the whole of a doorway. It was truly a wonderful palace, as
the Prince had said, but it was a little surprising at first sight.
Dimples, however, had no time to think about it, for at that moment a
stern voice was heard coming from below the floor of the hall.
"Bring the prisoner here!" said the voice. Dimples looked through a hole
in the floor,--which was not difficult, as the floor was full of
holes,--and there, on the bottom brick of all, stood the toy captain.
"Come along. Bottom brick. Captain waiting," said her guide; and with
some little difficulty--for it is not easy to jump from beam to beam
when one is accustomed to solid floors--she scrambled after him and
arrived in front of the terrible captain.
"Oho!" said the captain, grasping his sword as tightly as he
could,--which was very tight, as it happened, because his fingers were
glued to it,--"who is the real person now, you or I?"
The question was a puzzling one, but Dimples did her best to answer it
truthfully. "Well," she said, "I suppose you are real, though I didn't
think so before; and I suppose I am real, too; but it is rather
confusing, isn't it?"
"Not at all confusing," said the captain, a little rudely it must be
owned. "It is quite clear that I am real, of course; but as for
you--why, you are not even painted!"
"No," said Dimples, as politely as she could, "I am not painted, and I
don't think I want to be painted, thank you. Why, I should never feel
safe for a moment if I had a face that anybody could wash off with a
sponge!"
At this the toy captain was so furious that he shook with anger from
head to foot.
"Do you know," he said, "that I have only to pull out the brick on which
I am standing, and the whole palace will tumble down on your head?"
"Of course I know," laughed Dimples, who was growing less frightened
every minute; "but if you do, it will tumble down on your head as well
as mine."
"That is true," said the toy captain, "but I am a real person and I am
made of wood, so it will make no difference to me."
Dimples was obliged to own that there was something in what the captain
said; and as she disliked nothing so much as being beaten in an
argument, she at once pretended not to be listening.
"Oh, dear, how hungry I am!" she said, yawning.
"If you were real and not made up," said the toy captain, "you would
never get hungry at all." However, he called out to a soldier, who was
mounting guard on the top of a pillar just over his head, and ordered
him to bring the prisoner some food. In a few minutes, Dimples found
herself in front of a curious meal, served on round cardboard dishes and
consisting of one red jelly, two raw mutton chops, a bunch of grapes,
and a slice of salmon.
"But they won't come off the dishes, will they?" asked Dimples, who had
fed her dolls for years on the very things that were now placed before
her.
"Of course not," said the toy captain. "They would have been lost long
ago if they had not been stuck on. What more can you want? If you were a
real person, as you pretend to be, your appetite would be taken away by
the mere sight of dishes like those!"
This, in fact, was what had already happened to Dimples, for there was
nothing very enticing about a jelly from which she remembered sucking
the paint only a week ago; while as for the other things, even her
youngest and favourite doll was beginning to grow tired of their
monotony. So she made no objection when the captain ordered the dishes
to be removed.
"Now you have satisfied your hunger," continued the captain, "I will
order you to be taken upstairs to the dungeon."
"Upstairs!" exclaimed Dimples. "What a funny place for a dungeon!"
"Funny? Not in the least!" said the captain, severely. "In a palace of
this kind you must take the rooms as you find them. You will find the
dungeon squeezed between the drawing-room and the kitchen, at the very
top of the left-hand tower. There you will have to stop until the King
comes."
"Who is the King?" asked Dimples, curiously.
Before the toy captain had time to answer, the band of the regiment
struck up an inspiriting march. To be sure, there were only two wooden
drummer boys and two wooden trumpeters, of whom one had lost his trumpet
and was therefore obliged to blow continually through his stiffened
fingers; but for all that they made quite a cheerful noise, and in the
middle of it the King mounted the steps and entered the palace.
"Hurrah! The King! It is the King!" shouted the whole regiment in twenty
wooden voices.
"The King!" repeated Dimples. "Why, it is the Prince!"
"Don't talk nonsense," said the captain, gruffly. "Do you suppose we
would allow ourselves to be commanded by a mere Prince? This is a real
King, I can tell you, though he isn't made of wood, more's the pity!"
And when Dimples saw the dignified way in which the little King walked
into the palace, she could not help agreeing that he was a very real
King. Indeed, she found it difficult to believe that he was nothing but
her playfellow, the Prince Picotee, for never before had she seen him
look so happy and so triumphant. There was no doubt that the little King
had found his kingdom; and Dimples, remembering that she was really his
prisoner, began to wish that she had not teased him so much about his
toy palace and his toy soldiers. But the King did not even see her; he
walked straight into the great hall and then stood still and drew a long
breath of satisfaction.
"It is the most wonderful palace that ever was built," he murmured to
himself; "it is much, much more wonderful than I thought."
Then his eyes fell upon Dimples, who was trying to hide behind the stiff
figure of the toy captain, on the bottom brick of all.
"What is that girl doing in my palace?" asked the King, frowning.
"Please your Majesty, it is your Majesty's prisoner," answered the
captain,--"she is waiting for your Majesty to decide on her punishment."
"What has the prisoner done?" asked the King in as dignified a manner as
he could assume, considering that he stood on a tottering brick at the
edge of the abyss in which the captain and his prisoner awaited him.
"Please your Majesty, she was heard to say that your Majesty's army was
not a real army, and that I, your Majesty,--_I_ was nothing but a toy
soldier!" said the captain; and he again shook with anger from head to
foot, which, after all, was the only way he could shake, because he was
made all in one piece.
"Send the prisoner here," commanded the King. "It is not safe to keep a
prisoner on the bottom brick--especially when she is a girl."
So Dimples, wishing from the bottom of her heart that the little
playfellow she had teased had not been suddenly changed into a king,
clambered up again into the hall.
"Prince Picotee," she said in an anxious undertone, as soon as she was
near him, "I do think it is a real palace now, I do really!"
"Why, it's only Dimples!" exclaimed the King, and he nearly tumbled off
the edge of the floor in his surprise. Then he remembered that he was a
king, and tried to become dignified again, which, of course, was
exceedingly difficult now that the Prime Minister's daughter was there
to see. As for Dimples, she had not played with the Prince all her life
for nothing, and she quite ceased to be frightened of him as soon as she
came face to face with him.
"If you let that nasty captain punish me, I'll tell them all you are
only a little boy and not a king at all," she whispered; and her round
little face twinkled with merriment.
The King wavered. "I always said I would have no girls in my palace," he
murmured sorrowfully.
"Will you promise?" persisted Dimples.
The King avoided her eyes. It was very hard not to give in and smile
too, when Dimples looked like that. After all, he reflected, if Dimples
was a girl and did not understand things properly, she made an excellent
playfellow; and the most wonderful palace in the world might grow a
little dull if there were only wooden soldiers to share it with. So the
King made up his mind, and took the prisoner by one hand and waved his
other in a royal manner to the captain.
"I will talk it over with the prisoner," he announced, "so do not let us
be disturbed. And you need not take any more prisoners without
consulting me," he added hastily, for he really feared that his nurse
might be the next prisoner, and then, where would be the fun of being a
king at all?
"Now, let us go and explore your palace," said Dimples, impatiently; and
the captain was left on the bottom brick to get over his disappointment.
It would be impossible to describe how the two children wandered over
the fairy palace that the Prince had built; how they climbed from one
floor to another; how they dropped from arch to pillar; how they wound
their way in and out of delightful passages, finding fresh secret rooms
as they went; how from one window they looked down on the vast nursery
tableland and from another caught a glimpse of the towering
rocking-horse; how they quite forgot they were King and prisoner, and
stood at last, hand in hand, on the battlements of the highest tower and
told each other what fun it was to play in a real fairy palace.
The toy captain, however, had not forgotten anything; and when he saw
them talking in this familiar manner on the battlements--which he could
easily do from his position on the bottom brick, so cleverly was this
wonderful palace built--he felt it was high time to interfere.
"Has your Majesty decided how to punish the prisoner?" asked the toy
captain, holding himself in his very stiffest manner and raising his
voice sufficiently to be heard on the battlements.
The King looked at the prisoner, and the prisoner laughed at the King.
"Well," said Dimples, demurely, "_has_ your Majesty made up his mind?"
"Oh, _don't_!" whispered his Majesty, crossly. "You know I can't behave
like a king if you laugh at me!" Then he folded his arms and looked down
at the captain. "I have decided not to punish the prisoner at all," he
said solemnly.
"What!" cried the captain, furiously. "You are not going to punish the
prisoner at all?"
"No," said his Majesty, growing bolder; "and what is more, I am going to
have you beheaded for interfering in the King's private affairs!"
Even Dimples felt a little nervous when she saw the look that crept over
the captain's face.
"Oh, dear," she whispered to the Prince, "that is how he looked
yesterday when I said he wasn't real. Would it not be wiser to make
friends with him?"
But her little playfellow was looking as he had looked when he first
entered his palace. "A king," he said grandly, "makes neither friends
nor enemies. The captain is only my toy, and I can do as I will with
him."
The captain's fury knew no bounds when he overheard this. "That is what
comes of having a king who is not made of wood," he said. "But you have
forgotten one thing, your Majesty!"
"And what is that?" asked the King, smiling.
"The bottom brick," said the toy captain, as he stooped and pulled it
out.
Truly, there had never been such a shatter and a clatter and a tumble as
when the toy captain pulled out the bottom brick of the Prince's palace!
And in the midst of it all the children felt themselves falling and
falling and falling. And louder than it all sounded the mocking laughter
of the toy captain.
* * * * *
"Some people would say it was only a dream," observed Prince Picotee,
the next morning, as they stood over the ruins on the nursery floor.
"It can't have been a dream," answered Dimples, who was always
practical, "because here is the head of the toy captain."
"And here," added the Prince, bending down, "is his body. So he _was_
beheaded after all!"
"I wish," sighed Dimples, "that it could all come over again."
"It will some day," the Prince assured her, "when I am King and have
built another palace like this one."