The little Prince was coming; and in the dim, rich house that was his,
some children were making ready a feast for him. They strewed sweet
flowers, and lighted the candles, and made ready the table, white and
fair, with the gold and silver service.
"It should stand here!" said one.
"Nay!" said another; "this is the place for it; and the candles must be
over yonder." And he moved them.
"That I will never consent to!" said the first. "Let me do things
properly, while you go and change your dress for a suitable one."
"I shall not change my dress!" said the second child.
"Oh, shame!" said the first.
While they wrangled, the children of the wood peeped in at the door,
ragged and rosy and bright-eyed, and laughed, and ran away.
"Let us make a feast too," they said, "even if we have no fine things."
They set them down under a great oak tree that grew beside the way, and
one gathered acorn cups, and another pulled burdock leaves and laid them
for a cloth, and a third plucked the wild strawberries that shone like
rubies in the grass.
"Here is a fine feast!" cried the wood children.
Just then along came the little Prince, and they called to him, "Come
and play with us, and share our feast!"
"With all my heart!" said the little Prince. "But are there not other
children in the house yonder who would like to join us?"
"Nay, they are busy quarrelling!" said the wood children.
"Then we do not want them!" said the little Prince. He sat down with
them under the oak tree, and they all ate and drank and were right
merry.
But the children in the dim, rich house pulled the table this way and
that, and moved the lights hither and yon, and looked at their delicate
robes and sighed: "The little Prince is long in coming!" they said.