girls in your palace."
Prince Picotee kicked the headless captain about the floor thoughtfully.
"Well, I'm not quite sure," he said, growing a little red. "Perhaps I'll
have one girl."
"Will you?" laughed Dimples. "But what if she pulls down your wonderful
palace?"
"Ah," said Prince Picotee, gravely, "I shall not tell her about the
bottom brick!"
The Lady Daffodilia
No one in the whole kingdom was so idle, or so careless, or so
thoughtless as the Lady Daffodilia. The only thing she had done ever
since she was born was to grow and grow and grow, so that, although she
was only twelve years old, she was quite as tall as the Countess, her
mother. In fact, she was tall enough to be conceited about it, which, of
course, was extremely foolish of her, for she had certainly had nothing
to do with it herself.
"You are a whole year older than I am, but I am a head taller than you,"
was what she said to Prince Brilliant, when he came to play with her,
one day. She was perched on the garden wall at the time, so she was able
to look down on the little Prince even more than usual.
"Hush!" said the Countess, who was drinking tea on the lawn. "That is
not the way to speak to a Prince."
Prince Brilliant stuck his chin into the air and tried to make the most
of his height.
"I don't care a bit," he said; "I wouldn't have silly long legs like
yours for anything. It's much better to know things; and only think of
all the things I know that you never heard of! You couldn't even say the
exports and imports of Fairyland without looking in the book first; now,
could you?"
"Hush!" said his Queen-mother, who was also drinking tea on the lawn.
"That is not the way to speak to a little lady."
The Lady Daffodilia stooped a little, and smoothed out the creases in
her black silk stockings, just to show that she had not forgotten how
much longer her legs were than the Prince's. The Prince pretended not to
see.
"What you say is very true," then said Daffodilia, who was always fair,
even when she was most aggravating; "but I am better off than you, all
the same. I can go and look in the book if I want to know all those
tiresome stuffy things you think such a lot about; but all the books in
the world won't make you so tall as I am!"
The Prince was much annoyed, for there was no doubt that the Lady
Daffodilia had the best of the argument. He aimed a most unprincely kick
at a harmless geranium plant, that, like the Lady Daffodilia, had never
done anything in its life but grow; and he turned very red in the face.
"You're only a girl," he said; "and girls think too much of themselves.
That's what my Professor says!"
"If _you_ were a girl," laughed the Lady Daffodilia, "it would not
matter about your being such a little bit of a thing! Is it not very
unpleasant to be so short, when you are a boy?"
The Prince turned and walked quickly towards the garden gate. It was
true that he was a prince, and could not therefore be rude to the Lady
Daffodilia; but he was a boy, too, and if he had stopped another minute
he was quite certain he would have lifted her down from the wall and
given her a good shaking.
"Where are you going?" she cried after him, and laughed more than ever
when she saw how cross she had made him.
"Where are you going?" echoed the Queen and the Countess.
Prince Brilliant turned when he reached the gate, and faced them all
with a resolute look on his small, round face.
"I am going to find out the way to grow tall," he said. "I shall not
come back until I am as tall as the Lady Daffodilia."
Then he went through the gate and slammed it behind him, and marched
away down the hot, dusty road. The Queen and the Countess only smiled,
for they did not suppose he had gone for good; but the Lady Daffodilia
slipped down from the wall and on to the grass lawn, and began to weep.
"I have sent away my favourite Prince," she sobbed, "and I shall never
have him to play with again."
"Do not cry, little daughter," said the Countess, soothingly; "your
Prince will come back soon."
"You do not know him so well as I do," said Daffodilia. "He always means
what he says; and since it is quite certain that nothing can ever make
him as tall as I am, it is quite certain that he will never come back
any more."
It seemed as though her words were likely to come true, for the Prince
had not returned by bedtime; and, although the King's messengers rode
out that very night and hunted the whole country up and down for days
and weeks and years, not a trace was ever found of the little Prince who
had gone to learn the way to grow tall. So the kingdom was left without
an heir to the throne, and the Lady Daffodilia was left without a
playfellow. It was not her way, however, to sit down and cry about it,
besides which she had found something really important to do at last.
"If the Prince has gone away to grow as tall as I am," she said, "_I_
will stay at home and grow as clever as he is!"
So she shut herself up in the Count's library with a pile of dusty
books, and tried her very best to learn the exports and imports of
Fairyland. But as fast as she learned one she forgot the other; and she
ended by completely jumbling them up, which was really a serious matter,
for it is quite evident that the things we give to Fairyland are not at
all the same things as Fairyland gives to us. And then, long before the
Lady Daffodilia had grown as clever as the Prince, the people came and
clapped her into prison, "for," they said, "it is your fault that the
heir to the throne is lost." It is true that they did not put her into a
very unpleasant prison, for it was a nice, comfortable old castle, in
the middle of a green plain; but there was no one to play with and no
one to tease, so it was most decidedly a prison. Added to this, the Lady
Daffodilia seemed to have stopped growing at last, for she never grew
another inch after the Prince went away; and as this robbed her of her
only occupation, she began for the first time in her life to long for
something to do. And she grew so tired of looking at the same green
plain day after day, that she determined to make it into a garden for a
change; and the flowers and the shrubs were so proud of being planted by
such dainty, white hands that they tried their very hardest to grow up
nicely and be a credit to her; and the result was that the little lady
in the castle soon became known as the most wonderful gardener in the
kingdom.
Now, when Prince Brilliant ran away from the Lady Daffodilia he found
the road so hot and so dusty that he was obliged to keep near the hedge
at the side; and he had not run very far before he pushed his head
through a very elegant spider's web. The spider was exceedingly cross,
and grumbled; but the daddy-longlegs that tumbled out of her web was
very much pleased with himself.
"Well, my little friend," he said to the Prince, "where are you running
so fast, this fine morning?"
Now, one of the things the Prince had learned from his Professor was the
way to speak to a daddy-longlegs, so before another five minutes had
passed he had told him the whole of his trouble. "Do _you_ know the way
to make your legs grow long?" asked the Prince at the end of his story.
"Well," said the daddy-longlegs, "that is certainly one of the things I
am generally supposed to know; but if I show you the way, do you think
you will have patience to do everything I tell you? It may take a very
long time."
"I can wait years and years and years and years," said the Prince, in
his determined way; and the daddy-longlegs had the sense to see that he
meant what he said.
"Right you are," he said. "Then jump straight into that hedge; and the
more spiders' webs you break on the way, the better--nasty, choky,
stuffy things!"
"What shall I do when I get there?" asked the Prince.
"Oh, you haven't got to do anything," said the daddy-longlegs, with a
chuckle. "Just wait there until I come to you."
"All right; but you won't be long, will you?" said the Prince; and he
tucked his crown under his arm and shut his eyes tight and jumped
straight into the thorny, prickly hedge.
When he opened his eyes, he found himself in a strange new country, that
was all made of rose-coloured dreams, and filled with rose-coloured air,
and lighted with rose-coloured sunbeams. There were no people or trees
or mountains or rivers to be seen; but before the little Prince had time
to notice this, his mind was filled with rose-coloured thoughts, and so
he forgot the Lady Daffodilia and his own crossness and everything that
had made him unhappy when he was in the real world.
"Hullo! Where am I?" he cried.
"You are in the world of dreams, to be sure," said a voice in his ear.
"Where else should you be at your time of life?"
"But who lives here?" asked Prince Brilliant.
A great many voices answered him. "_We_ live here, of course," they
said. "We are really nice dreams, we are; and when children are the
right sort, like yourself, they come here to stay with us until they are
grown up."
"May I play with you, then?" asked the Prince. In the real world he had
been too fond of books to play much, but here he felt as though he must
do nothing but play all day long.
"Of course you may," answered the dream voices; "that is what you are
here for."
Prince Brilliant was soon the happiest boy possible. Some people might
think it dull to have playfellows who could not be seen, but the Prince
thought nothing could be more delightful than to live in the midst of
dreams for the rest of his life. It is true that he was fast forgetting
everything that his Professor had taught him; but this was hardly
surprising, for there is no room in a very small head for serious
thoughts as well as rose-coloured ones.
It is doubtful whether the Prince would ever have wanted to go back to
the real world again, if he had not met the daddy-longlegs one day, as
he was strolling along with his favourite dream.
"Hullo!" said the daddy-longlegs, chuckling. "I see it is time for you
to go back into the real world."
"What, already?" exclaimed the Prince. "Why, you said I should have to
wait years and years and years and----"
"You have been here exactly seven years," interrupted the
daddy-longlegs; "and it is time for you to meet the waking-up dream."
The Prince suddenly began to remember things. "When shall I be as tall
as the Lady Daffodilia?" he cried. But the daddy-longlegs had no time to
do anything but chuckle before the waking-up dream came and seized hold
of the Prince, and he found himself falling, falling, falling--down,
down, down--until he dropped with a thud on a soft grass lawn, and
found himself in the middle of the most beautiful garden in the world. A
little way off stood an old grey castle; and as he lay looking at it the
gate swung open, and out stepped a dainty, winsome little lady.
The Prince sprang to his feet with a shout and held out his arms; and
the Lady Daffodilia ran straight into them without stopping so much as
to think.
"How _did_ you learn to grow so tall?" she asked, looking up at him.
"Well," said the Prince, truthfully, "I just went into the world of
dreams and waited till I was grown up. You see, I was a boy and not a
girl, all the time; so I was not in such a hurry as you to get my
growing done early."
"I tried to grow as clever as you," sighed Daffodilia, "but nothing
would stop in my head. I couldn't even say the exports and imports of
Fairyland without looking in the book first!"
"Never mind," laughed the Prince; "I don't believe there are any
imports, for I am sure _we_ have nothing good enough to send there. And
as for the exports, there is only one thing that Fairyland has sent into
this country that is worth remembering."
"And what is that?" she asked anxiously.
"It is something that is not very tall and not very serious and not very
wise," answered the Prince; "but it is sweet and merry and charming, and
it is called the Lady Daffodilia!"
The Kite That Went to the Moon
[Illustration]
Jerry had made the biggest kite in the village; and Chubby, the
woodcutter's daughter, had painted a big round moon on it and several
stars as well. That alone was enough to show that it was by no means an
ordinary kite; so it was no wonder that Jerry felt very proud of himself
when he ran on to the village green to fly it.
"Stand back, all of you!" he said, as the girls and boys came crowding
round him. "Now, you shall see my kite fly to the moon!"
No doubt, Jerry was inclined to make quite enough fuss about his kite;
but it is not every day that one has a chance of flying the biggest kite
in the village, especially when one is only seven years old. He felt
very sad, however, when he found that his kite had no intention of
flying to the moon. Every time he threw it into the air, back it fell
again on the grass; and although he tried again and again, and used
yards and yards of the very best string that twopence-halfpenny could
buy, any one could see that something was decidedly wrong with the
biggest kite in the village.
Jerry turned red, and blinked his eyes, and reminded himself desperately
that he was seven years old. It was certainly hard to have spent six
half-holidays in making a kite that would not fly in the end.
"Stupid thing!" he muttered crossly. "If I had the chance, just wouldn't
I fly to the moon! Kites don't know when they are well off!"
But when all the boys and girls burst out laughing, and pointed their
fingers at him and began to tease, it was impossible to keep back his
tears any longer. After all, one cannot go on remembering for ever that
one is seven years old. The children, however, only laughed the more,
when the little maker of the kite suddenly flung himself down on the
ground and began to cry.
"What is the use of a kite that won't fly?" they jeered. "Take it home,
Jerry, and make it the same size as other people's kites! And mind you
let us know what the moon is like, when your kite gets there!"
Jerry started to his feet again and shook his fist at them. "Some day,"
he shouted, "I shall be able to laugh at you instead."
"When will that be, Jerry?" cried all the boys and girls.
"When my kite has flown to the moon," answered Jerry, in a determined
tone; and he picked up his kite there and then, and marched off to the
school to find Chubby, the woodcutter's daughter.
"Hullo, Chubby!" he said, popping his head in at the schoolroom window.
"Haven't you done that sum yet?"
Chubby looked up with a doleful face. After painting a moon and several
stars on the biggest kite in the village, it was not pleasant to be kept
in school just because seven would not go into sixty-three.
"I shall never finish it, Jerry, never!" she said with a sigh.
"Chubby," said Jerry, solemnly, "you've been crying."
Chubby rubbed her eyes hastily with her two fists. "I don't think so,"
she replied in a muffled tone; "it was just three tears that trickled
down my nose and made a smudge on the slate; but that isn't crying. You
know it isn't, Jerry!"
Jerry rubbed his own eyes a little guiltily. "My kite wouldn't fly," he
remarked, and tried to look as though he did not care a bit.
"What!" cried Chubby. "Wouldn't your kite fly? Then I never need have
cried at all."
Jerry clambered on the window ledge and sat there with his legs swinging
to and fro. He wished Chubby would not talk so much about crying. "All
the string got mixed up," he explained with dignity; "I expect that was
it."
"I don't," said Chubby, decidedly; "it was because the tail was too
short. I told you so, all the time."
No doubt there was something in what she said, but reasons are not much
good when you are seven years old and your kite won't fly, and Jerry was
not in a mood to be trifled with.
"If you know so much about it," he retorted, "you'd better come and fly
it yourself."
"I only wish I could," sighed poor little Chubby. "If you'll tell me how
many times seven goes into--"
"Oh, don't," interrupted Jerry, crossly. "How can I do sums when my kite
won't fly?"
Then he flung himself down from the window ledge, and started off to
find some one who would tell him why his kite would not fly. Half-way
down the village street, he met a fine black raven.
"Good day to you," said Jerry, who knew that ravens could explain most
things if they chose. "Can you tell me why my kite won't fly?"
"Caw, caw!" croaked the raven. "Nine times, Jerry, nine times! Caw,
caw!"
"I wonder what he means," thought Jerry, and trudged on a little
farther. Presently he met a sheep. Now, sheep do not know much as a
rule, but they are always extremely anxious to tell what they do know.
So Jerry asked her at once why his kite would not fly.
"Baa, baa!" said the sheep. "Nine times, Jerry, nine times! Baa, baa!"
"Everybody is going mad this afternoon," thought Jerry; and he went on a
little farther. Just at the end of the village, a cockchafer came
buzzing round his head.
"Buz-z-z!" hummed the cockchafer. "Nine times, Jerry, nine times!
Buz-z-z!"
"Oh, go away, do!" cried Jerry, impatiently. "What do you all mean by
nine times?"
The cockchafer did not go away an inch, but buzzed closer to Jerry's
head than before. "Buz-z-z," he hummed; "nine times, Jerry, nine times,
nine times, nine times, nine times--"
All at once, the cockchafer's meaning entered Jerry's head, which was
hardly to be wondered at, considering how close his head was at that
moment to the cockchafer.
"Of course it's nine times!" he cried. "Why didn't I think of that
before?" Then he turned round and dragged his kite all the way back to
the school, where Chubby still sat sighing over her sum.
"It goes nine times exactly, Chubby," he told her through the window;
"so now you can come and help me to carry this great big kite."
"Where are we going, Jerry?" asked Chubby, when she had finished her sum
and joined him.
"We are going out into the world, to discover the reason why my kite
won't fly," answered Jerry; and between them they picked up the biggest
kite in the village and carried it out into the world.
"How are we going to discover why your kite won't fly?" asked Chubby,
when they had walked a good way. She had had no tea, to tell the truth,
and was beginning to feel remarkably hungry.
"We will ask everybody we meet," said Jerry, who had had his tea and was
therefore not at all hungry. "There is sure to be some one in the world
who can tell us, and we will not rest until we find him."
"We haven't met anybody yet," remarked Chubby, rather dolefully. "How
long do you think we shall have to go on walking before we find the
right person?"
"Perhaps for years and years," answered Jerry, cheerfully. "But if we
are quick, we may meet him sooner than that."
He quickened his steps as he spoke, and Chubby had to run a little to
keep up with him. It was beginning to grow dark now, and the country
seemed more and more desolate.
"The world is not so full of people as I expected to find it," said
Jerry, in a disappointed tone. "I do hope we shall soon meet some one
who will know why my kite won't fly."
Just then, he thought he heard something from behind that sounded like a
sob. Sure enough, there was Chubby, wiping her eyes with the corner of
her pinafore.
"I'm so hungry," she sobbed. "I want my tea. Can't we go home, Jerry,
and put off seeing the world until to-morrow?"
Jerry looked at her and sighed. If it had been any one but Chubby, he
would most certainly have grumbled at her. As it was, he only propped
up the kite against the hedge and made her sit down beside it.
"I am afraid I don't know the way home," he said; "but if you will wait
here, I will go and get you something to eat."
He was not at all sure where he was going to find it, but he hastened
along the road as fast as he could and hoped he would soon come to a
house. Long before he came to a house, however, he came to a man, a
little old man, who was carrying a large sack on his shoulder. Directly
he saw Jerry, he swung the sack on to the ground and began untying the
mouth of it.
"Well, my little fellow," he said in a friendly tone, "what do you want
out of my bag?"
"That depends on what you have got in your bag," answered Jerry,
promptly.
"I have everything in the world in my bag," replied the little old man,
"for everything is there that everybody wants. I have laughter and tears
and happiness and sadness; I can give you riches or poverty, sense or
nonsense; here is a way to discover the things that you don't know, and
a way to forget the things that you do know. Will you have a toy that
changes whenever you wish, or a book that tells you stories whenever you
listen to it, or a pair of shoes in which you can dance from boyhood
into youth? Choose whatever you like and it shall be yours; but
remember, I can only give you one thing out of my bag, so think well
before you make up your mind."
Jerry did not stop to think at all. "Have you something to eat in your
bag, something that will please a hungry little girl who has had no
tea?" he asked.
The little old man smiled and pulled out a small cake about the size of
Jerry's fist. It did not look as though it would satisfy any one who was
as hungry as Chubby; but as the old man disappeared, sack and all, the
moment he had given Jerry the cake, it was not much good complaining
about it. So back trotted Jerry to the place where he had left Chubby;
and greatly to his relief her face beamed with joy directly she had
eaten one mouthful.
"What a beautiful cake!" she cried; "it tastes like strawberry jam and
toffee and ices, and all the things I like best. And see! as fast as I
eat it, it comes again, so that I shall never be able to finish it. Take
some, Jerry."
"Why," said Jerry, as soon as he had taken a bite, "it tastes like
currant buns and ginger-beer and all the things _I_ like best. It is
certain that we shall never starve as long as we have a fairy cake like
this." Then he told her how he had come by it.
"Perhaps," remarked Chubby, "the little old man could have told you why
your kite wouldn't fly."
"Perhaps he could," said Jerry, carelessly, "but I didn't think to ask
him. We'll come along and ask the next person instead."
When, however, they looked round for the kite, it was nowhere to be
seen. The moon came out obligingly from behind a cloud and helped them
as much as it could; but although they searched for a long time, not a
trace could they find of the biggest kite in the village.
"Oh dear, oh dear!" sighed Chubby. "Perhaps I went to sleep while you
were away, and somebody came along and took it. But I did think I
stopped awake, Jerry; I did indeed!"
"And so you did, to be sure!" cried a voice from the hedge; "but you
would have to be very wide awake to keep _that_ kite from giving you the
slip, as soon as the moon came up!"
Of course, no one but a wymp would have appeared like that, just in time
to say the right thing; so the children were not at all surprised when a
particularly wympish wymp came tumbling out of the hedge and perched
himself on a thistle and wimpled at them.
"Do you mean to say you know where the kite has gone?" asked both the
children, breathlessly.
"Look up there and see," answered the wymp, pointing to the sky.
The sky was covered with stars, hundreds and thousands of them, all
twinkling round the moon just as Chubby had painted them on the kite.
Only, she could not help thinking that her stars had more shape and were
decidedly more like stars than the real stars were; but this, she
supposed, might be because the real stars were such a long way off. One
of them was different from all the others; it had a long bright tail
that glittered like a cracker at Christmas time, and it was scurrying
across the sky at such a pace that the rest of the stars had to get out
of its way as best they could. Most of the people who looked out of
their windows that night thought they saw a comet; but Jerry and Chubby
knew better.
"Oh," they cried, clapping their hands with excitement. "There is our
kite, and it _is_ flying to the moon after all!"
"There's no doubt about that," said the wymp, who was still wimpling at
them from the top of the thistle.
"But why did it not fly to the moon this afternoon, when all the other
boys were looking on?" asked Jerry, regretfully.
"Because there wasn't a moon to fly to, of course!" answered the wymp.
"You shouldn't expect too much, even from the biggest kite in the
village. Directly there _was_ a moon, you see, away it flew."
"Then, if I had painted the sun on it, instead of the moon, it would
have flown away this afternoon!" exclaimed Chubby.
"Exactly so," said the wymp. "Now, what ever induced you to paint a
thing like the moon on anybody's kite, eh?"