THE PRINCE, TWO MICE, and SOME

THE PRINCE, TWO MICE, AND SOME

KITCHEN-MAIDS

*THE PRINCE, TWO MICE, AND

SOME KITCHEN-MAIDS*

WHEN the Prince was born the Queen said to the King, “My dear, do be very, very careful about the invitations. You know what fairies are. They always come to the christening whether you invite them or not, and if you forget to invite one of them she always makes herself so terribly unpleasant.”

“My love,” said the King, “I will invite them all,” and he took out his diamond-pointed pen and wrote out the cards on the spot.

But just then a herald came in to bring news of war. So the King had to go off in a hurry. The invitations were sent out, but the christening had to be put off for a year. At the end of this time the King had subdued all his enemies, so he was very pleased with himself. The Prince was a year old, and he also was pleased with himself, as all good babies are, and found the little royal fingers and toes a fresh and ever-delightful mystery. And the Queen was pleased with herself, as all good mothers should be—so everything went merrily. The Palace was hung with cloth of silver and strewn with fresh daisies, in honour of the great day, and after all had eaten and drunk to their hearts’ content the fairies came near with the gifts they had brought to their godson the Prince.

“He shall have beauty,” said the first.

“And wit,” said the second.

“And a pretty sweetheart,” said the third; “who loves him,” said the fourth.

And so they went on, foretelling for him all sorts of happy and desirable things. And as each fairy gave her gift she stooped and kissed the baby Prince, and then spreading her fine gossamer-gauze wings, fluttered away across the rosy garden. The crowd of fairies grew less and less, and there were only three left when the Queen pulled the King’s sleeve and whispered, “My dear, where’s Malevola?”

“I sent her a card,” said the King, casting an anxious look round him.

“Then it must have been lost on the way,” said the Queen, “or she’d have been here——”

“She is here,” said a low voice in the Queen’s ear. Suddenly the room grew dark, grey clouds hid the sun, and all the daisies on the floor shut up quite close. The poor Queen gave a start and a scream, and the King, brave as he was, turned pale, for Malevola was a terrible fairy, and the dress she wore was not at all the thing for a christening. It was made of spiders’ webs matted together, dark and dank with the damp of the tomb and the dust of dungeons. Her wings were the wings of a great bat; spiders and newts crawled round her neck; a serpent coiled about her waist and little snakes twisted and writhed in her straight black hair.

She looked at the Queen so terribly that her poor Mother-Majesty cried out without meaning to.

“Oh don’t!” she cried, and flung both arms round the cradle. The Prince was quite happy, playing with his new coral and bells, and looking at the Palace cat, who sat at the foot of the cradle washing herself.

“Now listen,” said Malevola, still speaking in the low, even voice that was so terrible. “You did not invite me to the christening. I’ve read my fairy tales, and I know what’s expected of a fairy who is left out on an occasion like this. I intend to curse your son.”

Then all the Kings and Queens who had come to the christening wished they had stayed away, and they and all the Court fell on their knees and begged Malevola for mercy. As for the three good fairies who were left, they hid behind the window-curtains, and the Court ladies, peeping between their fingers, said—

“Fancy deserting their godson like this! How unfairy-like!”

But the Queen and the King only wept, and the Prince played with his rattle and looked at the cat.

Then Malevola said mockingly: “Great King and mighty Sovereign, Malevola was not good enough to be asked to your tea-party. But your family shall come down in the world; your son shall marry a kitchen-maid and marry a lady with four feet and no hands.”

A shiver of horror ran through the room, and Malevola vanished. Then, suddenly, the sun came out, and people lifted up their heads, and dared again to look at each other. And the daisies, too, opened their eyes again.

MALEVOLA’S DRESS WAS NOT AT ALL THE THING FOR A CHRISTENING.

Then the good fairies came out from behind the window-curtains, and the poor Queen fell on her knees before them.

“Can’t you do anything?” she asked. “Can’t you undo what she says, and make it untrue?”

“Not even a fairy can make a true thing untrue,” said the good fairies sadly. “Malevola’s words will come true; but the Prince has already many gifts, and our gifts are yet to give, and these you shall choose. Whatever you wish shall be his.”

Then the King, recovering a little from the terror into which the fairy Malevola had thrown him, and remembering how well he and his royal line had always borne them in battle, said at once—

“Let the boy be brave.”

“He is brave,” said one of the good fairies; “he fears nothing.”

And at this the Prince ceased to feel any fear of the Palace cat. He put out his hand and pulled her tail so merrily that Pussy turned and clawed the little arm till the blood ran.

“Oh, dear!” cried his mother, “he is fearless, as you say. I wish he were afraid of cats, poor darling.”

“He is,” said the second fairy; “you have your wish.” And, indeed, the Prince screamed, and hid his face, and shrank from the Palace cat with such horror that the King pulled out his pencil and note-book and wrote an edict then and there banishing all cats from his dominions. But, all the same, he was very angry.

“Your Majesty has wasted one wish,” he said very politely to the Queen; “let us now leave the last gift in the hands of the last fairy.”

The last fairy came and kissed the Prince, who was now sobbing sleepily.

“He shall be happy,” she said; “he shall have his heart’s desire.”

Then she too vanished; and the Kings and Queens took their leave when their gold coaches came for them. And presently the King and Queen were left alone with the silver hangings and the strewn daisies and the baby.

“Oh dear! oh dear!” said the Queen; “this is dreadful! A kitchen-maid!—and a lady with four feet and no hands!”

“At least we are not likely to have a kitchen-maid with less than two hands,” said the King.

“We might arrange only to have titled kitchen-maids,” said the Queen timidly.

“The very thing,” the King answered: “that would make the love affair all that one could wish. But there’s still the marriage.”

“Of course he’ll marry the lady he loves.”

“It’s not the way of the world,” said the King. “At any rate, let’s hope he’ll love the lady he marries. Otherwise——”

“Otherwise what?” said the Queen.

“We know nothing about otherwise, do we, my Queen?” he said, catching her round the waist. And in his love for his wife and his son the King felt almost happy again, for here they were all three together, and when your son is in his cradle his marriage seems very far off indeed.

But the Queen was anxious and frightened, and while the Prince was still a child she sent messengers to the Courts of all the neighbouring Kings and Queens to tell them what had been foretold, which, indeed, most of them knew, having been at the christening. And she begged such of them as had daughters to send them as kitchen-maids, that so the Prince might at least fall in love with a real Princess. And as the Prince grew up he was so handsome and so brave, fearing nothing but cats, which, of course, he never saw, though he dreamed of them often and woke screaming, and also so brilliant and good, that, his father’s kingdom, being beyond compare the finest in all the round world, the young daughters of Kings vied with each other as to who should find favour in the eyes of the Queen-Mother, and so get leave to serve in the kitchen, each nursing the hope that some day the Prince would see her and love her, and perhaps even marry her. And he was very good friends with all the noble kitchen-maids, but he loved none of them, till one day he saw, at a window of the tower where the kitchen was, a bright face and bright hair tied round with a scarlet kerchief. And as he looked at the face it was withdrawn—but the Prince had lost his heart. He kept his secret safe in the place where his heart had been, and schemed and plotted to see this fair lady again; for when he went among the royal kitchen-maids she was not there with them. And he looked morning, noon, and evening, but he never could see her. So then he said—

“I must watch o’ nights—perhaps she is kept in prison in the tower above the kitchen, and at night those who watch her may sleep, and so I shall be able to talk to her.”

So he dressed in dark clothes and hid in the shadow of the palace courtyard and watched all one night. And he saw nothing. But in the early morning, when the setting moon and the rising sun were mixing their lights in the sky, he heard a heavy bolt shot back, and the door of the kitchen tower opened slowly. The Prince crouched behind a buttress and watched, and he saw the fair maid with the bright hair under the red kerchief. She swept the doorstep, and she drew water from the well in the middle of the courtyard; and presently he crept to the kitchen window and saw her light the fire and wash the dishes, and make all neat and clean within. And the Prince’s eyes followed her in all she did, and the more he looked at her the more he loved her. And at last he heard sounds as of folks stirring above, so he crept away, keeping close to the wall, and so back to his own rooms. And this he did again on the next morning, and on the next. And on the third morning, as he stood looking through the window at the girl with the bright hair and the bright kerchief, the gold chain he wore clinked against the stone of the window-sill. The maid started, and the bowl she held dropped on to the brick floor of the kitchen and broke into twenty pieces; and then and there she sat down on the floor beside it, and began to cry bitterly.

The Prince ran in and knelt beside her.

“Don’t cry, dear,” he said, “I’ll get you another bowl.”

“It isn’t that,” she sobbed, “but now they’ll send me away.”

“Who will?”

“The noble Kitchen-Maids. They keep me to do the work because, being Kings’ daughters, they don’t know how to do anything; but the Queen doesn’t know that there is a Real Kitchen-maid here, and now you have found out they will send me away.”

And she went on crying.

“Then you are a Real Kitchen-maid, and not noble at all?” said the Prince.

She stopped crying for a minute to say “No.”

“Never mind,” said the Prince. “You are twice as pretty as all the Kings’ daughters put together and twenty times as dear.”

At that she stopped crying for good and all, and looked up at him from the floor where she sat.

“Yes you are,” he said, “and I love you with all my heart.”

And with that he caught her in his arms and kissed her; and the Real Kitchen-Maid laid her face against his, and her heart beat wildly, for she knew what the Prince did not, and what, indeed, all the folk knew except the Prince, that this had been foretold at his christening; but she knew also that though he loved her, he was not to marry her, since it was his dreadful destiny to marry some one with four feet and no hands.

“I wish I had no hands and four feet,” said the Real Kitchen-maid to herself. “I wouldn’t mind a bit, since it is me he loves.”

“What are you saying?” asked the Prince.

“I am saying that you must go,” said she. “If their Kitchen Highnesses find you here with me they’ll tear me into little pieces, for they all love you—to a Highness.”

“And you,” he whispered, “how much do you love me?”

“Oh,” she answered, “I love you better than my right hand and my left.”

And the Prince thought that a very strange answer. He went through that day in a happy dream; but he did not tell his dream to any one, lest some harm should come to the Real Kitchen-Maid. For he meant to marry her, and he had a feeling that his parents would not approve of the match.

Now that night, when the whole palace was asleep, the Real Kitchen-Maid got up and crept out past the sleepy sentinel and went home to her father the farmer and got one of his great white cart horses and rode away through the woods to the cavern where the Great White Rat sits sleeplessly guarding the Magic Cat’s-eye.

And every one wondered why he guarded it so carefully, for it seemed to have no great value. But the Great White Rat watched it constantly, without ever closing one of those round bright rat’-eyes of his, and when folk sought to lay hands on it he said—

“Be careful: it has the power to change you into a mouse.”

On which folk dropped it hastily and went their ways, leaving him still on guard.

To him now went the little Kitchen-Maid, and asked for help, for he was thousands of years old, and had more wisdom between his nose and ears than all the books in all the world. She told him all that had happened.

“Now what shall I do?” she said. And the Great White Rat, never shifting his eyes from the Magic Cat’s-eye, answered—

“Keep your own counsel and be contented. The Prince loves you.”

“But,” said the Real Kitchen-Maid, “he is not to marry me, but a horrible creature with four feet and no hands.”

“Keep your secret and be content,” the Great White Rat repeated, “and if ever you see him in danger from a lady with four feet and no hands, come straight to me.”

So the Real Kitchen-Maid went back to the Palace, and set to work to clean pots and pans, for now it was bright dewy daylight, and the night had gone. And before the rest were awake again her Prince came to her and vowed he loved her more than life; so she kept her secret and was content.

At the time of the Prince’s christening the King had banished all cats from the kingdom, because he could not bear to see his son show fear of anything. But now and then strangers, not knowing of the edict, brought cats to that country, and if the Prince saw one of these cats he was taken with a trembling and a paleness, standing like stone awhile, and presently, with shrieks of terror, fleeing the spot. And it was now a long time since he had seen a cat.

Now, soon after the Prince had found out how he loved the Real Kitchen-Maid, his father and mother died suddenly as they were sitting hand in hand, for they loved each other so much that it was not possible for either to stay here without the other.

So then the Prince wept bitterly, and would not be comforted, and the Court stood about him with a long face, wearing its new mourning. And as he sat there with his face hidden Something came through the Palace gate and up the marble stairs and into the great hall where the Prince sat on the steps of his father’s throne weeping. And, before the courtiers could draw breath or decide whether it was Court etiquette for them to do anything while the Prince was crying except to stand still and look sad, the creature came up to the Prince and began to rub itself against his arm. And he, still hiding his face, reached out his hand and stroked it!

Then all the Court drew a deep breath, for they saw that the thing that had come in was a great black Cat.

And the Prince raised his eyes, and they looked to see him shrink and shriek; but instead he passed his hand over the black fur and said—

“Poor Pussy, then!”

And at these words the whole Court fled—by window and door. The courtiers took horse, those who had carriages went away in them, those who had none went on foot, and in less than a minute the Prince and the Cat were left alone together.

For the Court was learned in witch law, and knowing the Prince’s horror of cats it saw at once that a cat he was not afraid of was no cat at all, but a witch in that shape. Therefore the courtiers and the whole Royal household fled trembling and hid themselves.

All but the little Real Kitchen-Maid. She saw with terror that the Cat, or rather the witch in Cat’s shape, had done what no one else could do—roused the Prince from his dull dream of grief. And then she remembered the fate which Malevola had foretold for him—that he should marry a lady with four feet and no hands.

“Alack-a-day!” she cried. “This witch has four feet and no hands; but she can have hands whenever she chooses, and be a woman by her magic arts as easily as she can be a cat. And then he will love her—and what will become of me? Or, worse, she may marry him only to torment him. She may shut him up in some enchanted dungeon far from the light of day. Such things have happened before now.”

So she stood, hidden by the blue arras, and wrung her hands, and the tears ran down her cheeks. And all the time the black Cat purred to the Prince, and the Prince stroked the black Cat, and any one could have seen that he was every moment becoming more deeply bewitched. And still the Real Kitchen-Maid crouched behind the arras, and her heart ached that it knew no way to save him. Then suddenly she remembered the words of the Great White Rat—

“If ever you see him in danger from a lady with four feet and no hands come straight to me.”

Now surely was the time, for the Prince, she knew, was in desperate danger.

The Real Kitchen-Maid crept silently down the marble stairs, but once she was out of the Palace she ran like the wind to the stable. No men were about there—all had followed the example of the Court, and had run away when they heard of the strange coming of the witch-Cat. And of all the many horses that had stood in the stable only one remained, for each man in his fright had saddled the first horse that came to hand and ridden off on it. And the one that still stayed there was the Prince’s own black charger. He had had no mind to be saddled in haste by a stranger, and had turned and bitten the stranger who had attempted it. So he was there alone.

Now the little Kitchen-Maid lifted the Prince’s gold-broidered saddle from its perch, and the weight of it was such that she could not have carried it but for the heavy heart she bore because of her love to the Prince and his danger, and that made all else seem light. She put the saddle on the charger, and the jewelled bridle. And he neighed with pleasure, for he understood, being a horse who could see as far into a stone wall as most people. And when he was saddled he knelt for her to mount, and then up and away like the wind, and she had no need to guide him with the reins, for he found the way and kept it. He galloped steadily on, and the sun went down and the night grew dark, and he went on, and on, and on without stumble or pause, till at moonrise he halted before the house of the Great White Rat.

Then, as the Real Kitchen-Maid sprang down, the Great White Rat came out from his house and spoke. “You’ve come for it, then?”

“For what?”

“The Magic Cat’s-eye. I’ve guarded it some thousands of years. I knew there would be a use for it at last. He may be saved yet, if some one should love him well enough to die for him.”

“I do that,” said the little Kitchen-Maid, and took the Cat’s-eye in her hands.

“Swallow it,” said the White Rat, “and you’ll turn into a mouse.”

The little maid swallowed it at once, and, behold! she was a little mouse.

“What am I to do?” she asked.

“I can’t tell you,” said the Great White Rat, “but Love will tell you.”

So the little Kitchen-Maid, in the form of the mouse, ran up one of the horse’s legs, and held tight on to the saddle with all her little claws.

And as the great horse galloped back towards the palace in the moonlight, she thought and thought, and at last she said to herself—

“The witch is in cat’s shape, and she must have cat nature, so she will run after a mouse. She will run after me, and if I can lead her to a running stream she will leap across it, and then she will have to take her own shape again. That must be what the Great White Rat meant me to do. And if the Cat catches me—well, at least if I can’t save my Prince I can die for him.”

And the thought warmed her heart as the great horse thundered on through the dawn-light.

When at last, creeping softly on little noiseless feet, the Mouse-Kitchen-Maid re-entered the great hall, she saw that she was only just in time, for the black Cat was purring and looking back at the Prince as she walked, waving her black tail towards the further door of the hall, and the Prince, more bewitched than ever, was slowly following her.

Then the Real-Kitchen-Maid-Mouse uttered a squeak, and rushed across the porphyry floor, and the black Cat, true to its cat nature, left purring at the Prince and sprang after the Mouse, and the Mouse at its best speed, made for the garden where ran the stream that fed the marble basins where the royal gold-fish lived. The Prince understood nothing save that the enchanting black furry creature was leaving him, and in an instant he was alone. He followed to the door, and saw the Cat springing along the passage down the stairs—he followed fast—then along another passage that passed the foot of the back stairs, and he saw that the back stairs were like a water-fall—water was running down in a torrent and meandering away down the brick passage and out into the faint new sunshine.

When the Mouse saw this stream, she thought, “I’m saved.” She never thought of wondering how a stream came to be running down the back stairs of the palace. When she came to think of it afterwards she always believed that the Great White Rat had managed it somehow. She never knew that it was really a great flood from the royal bathroom, where the royal housemaid, in her eagerness to run away from the witch, had left all the royal bath-taps full on.

The Mouse bounded across the stream—the Cat saw the danger, but she could not stop herself. She, too, crossed the stream, and as she crossed it she turned into the wicked fairy Malevola—cobwebs, and snakes, and newts, and bat’s-wings, and all.

The Prince put his hand to his head like one awakening from sleep, and the horrible fairy vanished suddenly and for ever.

Then the Mouse ran trembling to the Prince, and in its thin little mouse’s voice told him all.

“My love and my lady,” he said, holding the Mouse against his cheek. “I will marry you now. That will carry out the wicked fairy’s prophecy. Then we will go back to the Great White Rat, and you shall be changed into a Princess.”

So the Prince rang the church bells till all the people came out of their holes where they had been hiding, to see the strange spectacle of a Prince married to a Mouse.

And directly they were married they set off on the black charger, and when they reached the Great White Rat they told their tale.

“And now,” said the Prince joyously, “if you will change her into a lady again we will go home at once and begin living happily ever after.”

The Great White Rat looked at them gravely.

“It’s impossible,” he said. “I am sorry, but the effects of the Magic Cat’s-eye are permanent. Once a mouse, always a mouse, if you get moused by the Magic Cat’s-eye.”

The Prince and the Mouse looked sadly at each other. This was the last thing they had expected. The Great White Rat looked at them earnestly. Then he said—

“If it would be of any use to you, I’ve got another Magic Cat’s-eye.”

He held it out. The Prince took it gladly. Kingdom and the life of a king were nothing to him compared with the love and happiness of a Real-Kitchen-Maid disguised as a mouse. He put the stone to his lips.

“You know what’ll happen if you do,” said the Great White Rat.

“I shall change into a mouse and live happy ever after,” said the Prince gaily.

“Perhaps,” said the Great White Rat, “nothing is impossible if people love each other enough.”

“You mustn’t,” cried the Mouse, trying to get between his lips and the Cat’s-eye.

THERE STOOD UP A PRINCE AND A PRINCESS.

“My dear little Real Kitchen-Maid,” said the Prince tenderly, “you have saved my life—and you are my life. I would rather be a mouse with you than a king without you!” And with that he swallowed the Cat’s-eye, and two small mice stood side by side before the Great White Rat. Very kindly he looked at them. Then he pulled a hair from his left whisker and laid it across their little brown backs. And on the instant there stood up a Prince and a Princess and at their feet lay the little empty mouse-skins.

“It’s lucky for you,” said the Great White Rat, “that you chose to swallow the Cat’s-eye, because people who have been moused by that means can never be un-moused except in pairs. Nothing is impossible if people only love each other enough.”

So the Prince and his bride returned to the palace and lived happy ever after. They were as happy as if they had been mice—which, in a country where there are no cats, is saying a good deal. Of course the Prince is still afraid of cats. But the curious thing is that now his wife is afraid of them too. Perhaps she learnt that lesson when she was a mouse for his sake. He, when he was a mouse for hers, learned this lesson, which is also the moral of this story: “Nothing is impossible if people only love each other enough.”

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MELISANDE

MELISANDE

OR, LONG AND SHORT DIVISION

WHEN the Princess Melisande was born, her mother, the Queen, wished to have a christening party, but the King put his foot down and said he would not have it.

“I’ve seen too much trouble come of christening parties,” said he. “However carefully you keep your visiting-book, some fairy or other is sure to get left out, and you know what that leads to. Why, even in my own family, the most shocking things have occurred. The Fairy Malevola was not asked to my great-grandmother’s christening—and you know all about the spindle and the hundred years’ sleep.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” said the Queen. “My own cousin by marriage forgot some stuffy old fairy or other when she was sending out the cards for her daughter’s christening, and the old wretch turned up at the last moment, and the girl drops toads out of her mouth to this day.”

“Just so. And then there was that business of the mouse and the kitchen-maids,” said the King; “we’ll have no nonsense about it. I’ll be her godfather, and you shall be her godmother, and we won’t ask a single fairy; then none of them can be offended.”

“Unless they all are,” said the Queen.

And that was exactly what happened. When the King and the Queen and the baby got back from the christening the parlourmaid met them at the door, and said—

“Please, your Majesty, several ladies have called. I told them you were not at home, but they all said they’d wait.”

“Are they in the parlour?” asked the Queen.

“I’ve shown them into the Throne Room, your Majesty,” said the parlourmaid. “You see, there are several of them.”

There were about seven hundred. The great Throne Room was crammed with fairies, of all ages and of all degrees of beauty and ugliness—good fairies and bad fairies, flower fairies and moon fairies, fairies like spiders and fairies like butterflies—and as the Queen opened the door and began to say how sorry she was to have kept them waiting, they all cried, with one voice, “Why didn’t you ask me to your christening party?”

“I haven’t had a party,” said the Queen, and she turned to the King and whispered, “I told you so.” This was her only consolation.

“You’ve had a christening,” said the fairies, all together.

“I’m very sorry,” said the poor Queen, but Malevola pushed forward and said, “Hold your tongue,” most rudely.

Malevola is the oldest, as well as the most wicked, of the fairies. She is deservedly unpopular, and has been left out of more christening parties than all the rest of the fairies put together.

“Don’t begin to make excuses,” she said, shaking her finger at the Queen. “That only makes your conduct worse. You know well enough what happens if a fairy is left out of a christening party. We are all going to give our christening presents now. As the fairy of highest social position, I shall begin. The Princess shall be bald.”

The Queen nearly fainted as Malevola drew back, and another fairy, in a smart bonnet with snakes in it, stepped forward with a rustle of bats’ wings. But the King stepped forward too.

“No you don’t!” said he. “I wonder at you, ladies, I do indeed. How can you be so unfairylike? Have none of you been to school—have none of you studied the history of your own race? Surely you don’t need a poor, ignorant King like me to tell you that this is no go?”

“How dare you?” cried the fairy in the bonnet, and the snakes in it quivered as she tossed her head. “It is my turn, and I say the Princess shall be——”

The King actually put his hand over her mouth.

“Look here,” he said; “I won’t have it. Listen to reason—or you’ll be sorry afterwards. A fairy who breaks the traditions of fairy history goes out—you know she does—like the flame of a candle. And all tradition shows that only one bad fairy is ever forgotten at a christening party and the good ones are always invited; so either this is not a christening party, or else you were all invited except one, and, by her own showing, that was Malevola. It nearly always is. Do I make myself clear?”

Several of the better-class fairies who had been led away by Malevola’s influence murmured that there was something in what His Majesty said.

“Try it, if you don’t believe me,” said the King; “give your nasty gifts to my innocent child—but as sure as you do, out you go, like a candle-flame. Now, then, will you risk it?”

No one answered, and presently several fairies came up to the Queen and said what a pleasant party it had been, but they really must be going. This example decided the rest. One by one all the fairies said goodbye and thanked the Queen for the delightful afternoon they had spent with her.

“It’s been quite too lovely,” said the lady with the snake-bonnet; “do ask us again soon, dear Queen. I shall be so longing to see you again, and the dear baby,” and off she went, with the snake-trimming quivering more than ever.

When the very last fairy was gone the Queen ran to look at the baby—she tore off its Honiton lace cap and burst into tears. For all the baby’s downy golden hair came off with the cap, and the Princess Melisande was as bald as an egg.

“Don’t cry, my love,” said the King. “I have a wish lying by, which I’ve never had occasion to use. My fairy godmother gave it me for a wedding present, but since then I’ve had nothing to wish for!”

“Thank you, dear,” said the Queen, smiling through her tears.

“I’ll keep the wish till baby grows up,” the King went on. “And then I’ll give it to her, and if she likes to wish for hair she can.”

“Oh, won’t you wish for it now?” said the Queen, dropping mixed tears and kisses on the baby’s round, smooth head.

“No, dearest. She may want something else more when she grows up. And besides, her hair may grow by itself.”

But it never did. Princess Melisande grew up as beautiful as the sun and as good as gold, but never a hair grew on that little head of hers. The Queen sewed her little caps of green silk, and the Princess’s pink and white face looked out of these like a flower peeping out of its bud. And every day as she grew older she grew dearer, and as she grew dearer she grew better, and as she grew more good she grew more beautiful.

Now, when she was grown up the Queen said to the King—

“My love, our dear daughter is old enough to know what she wants. Let her have the wish.”

So the King wrote to his fairy godmother and sent the letter by a butterfly. He asked if he might hand on to his daughter the wish the fairy had given him for a wedding present.

“I have never had occasion to use it,” said he, “though it has always made me happy to remember that I had such a thing in the house. The wish is as good as new, and my daughter is now of an age to appreciate so valuable a present.”

To which the fairy replied by return of butterfly:—

“Dear King,—Pray do whatever you like with my poor little present. I had quite forgotten it, but I am pleased to think that you have treasured my humble keepsake all these years.

“Your affectionate godmother,

“Fortuna F.”

So the King unlocked his gold safe with the seven diamond-handled keys that hung at his girdle, and took out the wish and gave it to his daughter.

And Melisande said: “Father, I will wish that all your subjects should be quite happy.”

But they were that already, because the King and Queen were so good. So the wish did not go off.

So then she said: “Then I wish them all to be good.”

But they were that already, because they were happy. So again the wish hung fire.

Then the Queen said: “Dearest, for my sake, wish what I tell you.”

“Why, of course I will,” said Melisande. The Queen whispered in her ear, and Melisande nodded. Then she said, aloud—

“I wish I had golden hair a yard long, and that it would grow an inch every day, and grow twice as fast every time it was cut, and——”

“Stop,” cried the King. And the wish went off, and the next moment the Princess stood smiling at him through a shower of golden hair.

“Oh, how lovely,” said the Queen. “What a pity you interrupted her, dear; she hadn’t finished.”

“What was the end?” asked the King.

“Oh,” said Melisande, “I was only going to say, ‘and twice as thick.’”

“It’s a very good thing you didn’t,” said the King. “You’ve done about enough.” For he had a mathematical mind, and could do the sums about the grains of wheat on the chess-board, and the nails in the horse’s shoes, in his Royal head without any trouble at all.

“Why, what’s the matter?” asked the Queen.

“You’ll know soon enough,” said the King. “Come, let’s be happy while we may. Give me a kiss, little Melisande, and then go to nurse and ask her to teach you how to comb your hair.”

“I know,” said Melisande, “I’ve often combed mother’s.”

“Your mother has beautiful hair,” said the King; “but I fancy you will find your own less easy to manage.”

And, indeed, it was so. The Princess’s hair began by being a yard long, and it grew an inch every night. If you know anything at all about the simplest sums you will see that in about five weeks her hair was about two yards long. This is a very inconvenient length. It trails on the floor and sweeps up all the dust, and though in palaces, of course, it is all gold-dust, still it is not nice to have it in your hair. And the Princess’s hair was growing an inch every night. When it was three yards long the Princess could not bear it any longer—it was so heavy and so hot—so she borrowed nurse’s cutting-out scissors and cut it all off, and then for a few hours she was comfortable. But the hair went on growing, and now it grew twice as fast as before; so that in thirty-six days it was as long as ever. The poor Princess cried with tiredness; when she couldn’t bear it any more she cut her hair and was comfortable for a very little time. For the hair now grew four times as fast as at first, and in eighteen days it was as long as before, and she had to have it cut. Then it grew eight inches a day, and the next time it was cut it grew sixteen inches a day, and then thirty-two inches and sixty-four inches and a hundred and twenty-eight inches a day, and so on, growing twice as fast after each cutting, till the Princess would go to bed at night with her hair clipped short, and wake up in the morning with yards and yards and yards of golden hair flowing all about the room, so that she could not move without pulling her own hair, and nurse had to come and cut the hair off before she could get out of bed.

“I wish I was bald again,” sighed poor Melisande, looking at the little green caps she used to wear, and she cried herself to sleep o’ nights between the golden billows of the golden hair. But she never let her mother see her cry, because it was the Queen’s fault, and Melisande did not want to seem to reproach her.

When first the Princess’s hair grew her mother sent locks of it to all her Royal relations, who had them set in rings and brooches. Later, the Queen was able to send enough for bracelets and girdles. But presently so much hair was cut off that they had to burn it. Then when autumn came all the crops failed; it seemed as though all the gold of harvest had gone into the Princess’s hair. And there was a famine. Then Melisande said—

“It seems a pity to waste all my hair; it does grow so very fast. Couldn’t we stuff things with it, or something, and sell them, to feed the people?”

So the King called a council of merchants, and they sent out samples of the Princess’s hair, and soon orders came pouring in; and the Princess’s hair became the staple export of that country. They stuffed pillows with it, and they stuffed beds with it. They made ropes of it for sailors to use, and curtains for hanging in Kings’ palaces. They made haircloth of it, for hermits, and other people who wished to be uncomfy. But it was so soft and silky that it only made them happy and warm, which they did not wish to be. So the hermits gave up wearing it, and, instead, mothers bought it for their little babies, and all well-born infants wore little shirts of Princess-haircloth.

And still the hair grew and grew. And the people were fed and the famine came to an end.

Then the King said: “It was all very well while the famine lasted—but now I shall write to my fairy godmother and see if something cannot be done.”

So he wrote and sent the letter by a skylark, and by return of bird came this answer—

“Why not advertise for a competent Prince? Offer the usual reward.”

So the King sent out his heralds all over the world to proclaim that any respectable Prince with proper references should marry the Princess Melisande if he could stop her hair growing.

Then from far and near came trains of Princes anxious to try their luck, and they brought all sorts of nasty things with them in bottles and round wooden boxes. The Princess tried all the remedies, but she did not like any of them, and she did not like any of the Princes, so in her heart she was rather glad that none of the nasty things in bottles and boxes made the least difference to her hair.

TRAINS OF PRINCES BRINGING NASTY THINGS IN BOTTLES AND ROUND WOODEN BOXES.

The Princess had to sleep in the great Throne Room now, because no other room was big enough to hold her and her hair. When she woke in the morning the long high room would be quite full of her golden hair, packed tight and thick like wool in a barn. And every night when she had had the hair cut close to her head she would sit in her green silk gown by the window and cry, and kiss the little green caps she used to wear, and wish herself bald again.

It was as she sat crying there on Midsummer Eve that she first saw Prince Florizel.

He had come to the palace that evening, but he would not appear in her presence with the dust of travel on him, and she had retired with her hair borne by twenty pages before he had bathed and changed his garments and entered the reception-room.

Now he was walking in the garden in the moonlight, and he looked up and she looked down, and for the first time Melisande, looking on a Prince, wished that he might have the power to stop her hair from growing. As for the Prince, he wished many things, and the first was granted him. For he said—

“You are Melisande?”

“And you are Florizel?”

“There are many roses round your window,” said he to her, “and none down here.”

She threw him one of three white roses she held in her hand. Then he said—

“White rose trees are strong. May I climb up to you?”

“Surely,” said the Princess.

So he climbed up to the window.

“Now,” said he, “if I can do what your father asks, will you marry me?”

“My father has promised that I shall,” said Melisande, playing with the white roses in her hand.

“Dear Princess,” said he, “your father’s promise is nothing to me. I want yours. Will you give it to me?”

“Yes,” said she, and gave him the second rose.

“I want your hand.”

“Yes,” she said.

“And your heart with it.”

“Yes,” said the Princess, and she gave him the third rose.

“And a kiss to seal the promise.”

“Yes,” said she.

“And a kiss to go with the hand.”

“Yes,” she said.

“And a kiss to bring the heart.”

“Yes,” said the Princess, and she gave him the three kisses.

“Now,” said he, when he had given them back to her, “to-night do not go to bed. Stay by your window, and I will stay down here in the garden and watch. And when your hair has grown to the filling of your room call to me, and then do as I tell you.”

“I will,” said the Princess.

So at dewy sunrise the Prince, lying on the turf beside the sun-dial, heard her voice—

“Florizel! Florizel! My hair has grown so long that it is pushing me out of the window.”

“Get out on to the window-sill,” said he, “and twist your hair three times round the great iron hook that is there.”

And she did.

Then the Prince climbed up the rose bush with his naked sword in his teeth, and he took the Princess’s hair in his hand about a yard from her head and said—

“Jump!”

The Princess jumped, and screamed, for there she was hanging from the hook by a yard and a half of her bright hair; the Prince tightened his grasp of the hair and drew his sword across it.

Then he let her down gently by her hair till her feet were on the grass, and jumped down after her.

They stayed talking in the garden till all the shadows had crept under their proper trees and the sun-dial said it was breakfast time.

Then they went in to breakfast, and all the Court crowded round to wonder and admire. For the Princess’s hair had not grown.

“How did you do it?” asked the King, shaking Florizel warmly by the hand.

“The simplest thing in the world,” said Florizel, modestly. “You have always cut the hair off the Princess. I just cut the Princess off the hair.”

“Humph!” said the King, who had a logical mind. And during breakfast he more than once looked anxiously at his daughter. When they got up from breakfast the Princess rose with the rest, but she rose and rose and rose, till it seemed as though there would never be an end of it. The Princess was nine feet high.

“I feared as much,” said the King, sadly. “I wonder what will be the rate of progression. You see,” he said to poor Florizel, “when we cut the hair off it grows—when we cut the Princess off she grows. I wish you had happened to think of that!”

The Princess went on growing. By dinner-time she was so large that she had to have her dinner brought out into the garden because she was too large to get indoors. But she was too unhappy to be able to eat anything. And she cried so much that there was quite a pool in the garden, and several pages were nearly drowned. So she remembered her “Alice in Wonderland,” and stopped crying at once. But she did not stop growing. She grew bigger and bigger and bigger, till she had to go outside the palace gardens and sit on the common, and even that was too small to hold her comfortably, for every hour she grew twice as much as she had done the hour before. And nobody knew what to do, nor where the Princess was to sleep. Fortunately, her clothes had grown with her, or she would have been very cold indeed, and now she sat on the common in her green gown, embroidered with gold, looking like a great hill covered with gorse in flower.

You cannot possibly imagine how large the Princess was growing, and her mother stood wringing her hands on the castle tower, and the Prince Florizel looked on broken-hearted to see his Princess snatched from his arms and turned into a lady as big as a mountain.

The King did not weep or look on. He sat down at once and wrote to his fairy godmother, asking her advice. He sent a weasel with the letter, and by return of weasel he got his own letter back again, marked “Gone away. Left no address.”

It was now, when the kingdom was plunged into gloom, that a neighbouring King took it into his head to send an invading army against the island where Melisande lived. They came in ships and they landed in great numbers, and Melisande looking down from her height saw alien soldiers marching on the sacred soil of her country.

“I don’t mind so much now,” said she, “if I can really be of some use this size.”

And she picked up the army of the enemy in handfuls and double-handfuls, and put them back into their ships, and gave a little flip to each transport ship with her finger and thumb, which sent the ships off so fast that they never stopped till they reached their own country, and when they arrived there the whole army to a man said it would rather be courtmartialled a hundred times over than go near the place again.

THE PRINCESS GREW SO BIG THAT SHE HAD TO GO AND SIT ON THE COMMON.

Meantime Melisande, sitting on the highest hill on the island, felt the land trembling and shivering under her giant feet.

“I do believe I’m getting too heavy,” she said, and jumped off the island into the sea, which was just up to her ankles. Just then a great fleet of warships and gunboats and torpedo boats came in sight, on their way to attack the island.

Melisande could easily have sunk them all with one kick, but she did not like to do this because it might have drowned the sailors, and besides, it might have swamped the island.

So she simply stooped and picked the island as you would pick a mushroom—for, of course, all islands are supported by a stalk underneath—and carried it away to another part of the world. So that when the warships got to where the island was marked on the map they found nothing but sea, and a very rough sea it was, because the Princess had churned it all up with her ankles as she walked away through it with the island.

When Melisande reached a suitable place, very sunny and warm, and with no sharks in the water, she set down the island; and the people made it fast with anchors, and then every one went to bed, thanking the kind fate which had sent them so great a Princess to help them in their need, and calling her the saviour of her country and the bulwark of the nation.

But it is poor work being the nation’s bulwark and your country’s saviour when you are miles high, and have no one to talk to, and when all you want is to be your humble right size again and to marry your sweetheart. And when it was dark the Princess came close to the island, and looked down, from far up, at her palace and her tower and cried, and cried, and cried. It does not matter how much you cry into the sea, it hardly makes any difference, however large you may be. Then when everything was quite dark the Princess looked up at the stars.

“I wonder how soon I shall be big enough to knock my head against them,” said she.

And as she stood star-gazing she heard a whisper right in her ear. A very little whisper, but quite plain.

“Cut off your hair!” it said.

Now, everything the Princess was wearing had grown big along with her, so that now there dangled from her golden girdle a pair of scissors as big as the Malay Peninsula, together with a pin-cushion the size of the Isle of Wight, and a yard measure that would have gone round Australia.

And when she heard the little, little voice, she knew it, small as it was, for the dear voice of Prince Florizel, and she whipped out the scissors from her gold case and snip, snip, snipped all her hair off, and it fell into the sea. The coral insects got hold of it at once and set to work on it, and now they have made it into the biggest coral reef in the world; but that has nothing to do with the story.

Then the voice said, “Get close to the island,” and the Princess did, but she could not get very close because she was so large, and she looked up again at the stars and they seemed to be much farther off.

Then the voice said, “Be ready to swim,” and she felt something climb out of her ear and clamber down her arm. The stars got farther and farther away, and next moment the Princess found herself swimming in the sea, and Prince Florizel swimming beside her.

“I crept on to your hand when you were carrying the island,” he explained, when their feet touched the sand and they walked in through the shallow water, “and I got into your ear with an ear-trumpet. You never noticed me because you were so great then.”

“Oh, my dear Prince,” cried Melisande, falling into his arms, “you have saved me. I am my proper size again.”

So they went home and told the King and Queen. Both were very, very happy, but the King rubbed his chin with his hand, and said—

“You’ve certainly had some fun for your money, young man, but don’t you see that we’re just where we were before? Why, the child’s hair is growing already.”

And indeed it was.

Then once more the King sent a letter to his godmother. He sent it by a flying-fish, and by return of fish come the answer—

“Just back from my holidays. Sorry for your troubles. Why not try scales?”

And on this message the whole Court pondered for weeks.

But the Prince caused a pair of gold scales to be made, and hung them up in the palace gardens under a big oak tree. And one morning he said to the Princess—

“My darling Melisande, I must really speak seriously to you. We are getting on in life. I am nearly twenty: it is time that we thought of being settled. Will you trust me entirely and get into one of those gold scales?”

So he took her down into the garden, and helped her into the scale, and she curled up in it in her green and gold gown, like a little grass mound with buttercups on it.

“And what is going into the other scale?” asked Melisande.

“Your hair,” said Florizel. “You see, when your hair is cut off you it grows, and when you are cut off your hair you grow—oh, my heart’s delight, I can never forget how you grew, never! But if, when your hair is no more than you, and you are no more than your hair, I snip the scissors between you and it, then neither you nor your hair can possibly decide which ought to go on growing.”

“Suppose both did,” said the poor Princess, humbly.

“Impossible,” said the Prince, with a shudder; “there are limits even to Malevola’s malevolence. And, besides, Fortuna said ‘Scales.’ Will you try it?”

“I will do whatever you wish,” said the poor Princess, “but let me kiss my father and mother once, and Nurse, and you, too, my dear, in case I grow large again and can kiss nobody any more.”

So they came one by one and kissed the Princess.

Then the nurse cut off the Princess’s hair, and at once it began to grow at a frightful rate.

The King and Queen and nurse busily packed it, as it grew, into the other scale, and gradually the scale went down a little. The Prince stood waiting between the scales with his drawn sword, and just before the two were equal he struck. But during the time his sword took to flash through the air the Princess’s hair grew a yard or two, so that at the instant when he struck the balance was true.

“You are a young man of sound judgment,” said the King, embracing him, while the Queen and the nurse ran to help the Princess out of the gold scale.

The scale full of golden hair bumped down on to the ground as the Princess stepped out of the other one, and stood there before those who loved her, laughing and crying with happiness, because she remained her proper size, and her hair was not growing any more.

THE PRINCESS IN ONE SCALE AND HER HAIR IN THE OTHER.

She kissed her Prince a hundred times, and the very next day they were married. Every one remarked on the beauty of the bride, and it was noticed that her hair was quite short—only five feet five and a quarter inches long—just down to her pretty ankles. Because the scales had been ten feet ten and a half inches apart, and the Prince, having a straight eye, had cut the golden hair exactly in the middle!

---

FORTUNATUS REX & CO.

FORTUNATUS REX & CO.

THERE was once a lady who found herself in middle life with but a slight income. Knowing herself to be insufficiently educated to be able to practise any other trade or calling, she of course decided, without hesitation, to enter the profession of teaching. She opened a very select Boarding School for Young Ladies. The highest references were given and required. And in order to keep her school as select as possible, Miss Fitzroy Robinson had a brass plate fastened on to the door, with an inscription in small polite lettering. (You have, of course, heard of the “polite letters.” Well, it was with these that Miss Fitzroy Robinson’s door-plate was engraved.)

“SELECT BOARDING ESTABLISHMENT FOR THE

DAUGHTERS OF RESPECTABLE MONARCHS.”

A great many kings who were not at all respectable would have given their royal ears to be allowed to send their daughters to this school, but Miss Fitzroy Robinson was very firm about references, and the consequence was that all the really high-class kings were only too pleased to be permitted to pay ten thousand pounds a year for their daughters’ education. And so Miss Fitzroy Robinson was able to lay aside a few pounds as a provision for her old age. And all the money she saved was invested in land.

Only one monarch refused to send his daughter to Miss Fitzroy Robinson, on the ground that so cheap a school could not be a really select one, and it was found out afterwards that his references were not at all satisfactory.

There were only six boarders, and of course the best masters were engaged to teach the royal pupils everything which their parents wished them to learn, and as the girls were never asked to do lessons except when they felt quite inclined, they all said it was the nicest school in the world, and cried at the very thought of being taken away. Thus it happened that the six pupils were quite grown up and were just becoming parlour boarders when events began to occur. Princess Daisy, the daughter of King Fortunatus, the ruling sovereign, was the only little girl in the school.

Now it was when she had been at school about a year, that a ring came at the front door-bell, and the maid-servant came to the schoolroom with a visiting card held in the corner of her apron—for her hands were wet because it was washing-day.

“A gentleman to see you, Miss,” she said; and Miss Fitzroy Robinson was quite fluttered because she thought it might be a respectable monarch, with a daughter who wanted teaching.

But when she looked at the card she left off fluttering, and said, “Dear me!” under her breath, because she was very genteel. If she had been vulgar like some of us she would have said “Bother!” and if she had been more vulgar than, I hope, any of us are, she might have said “Drat the man!” The card was large and shiny and had gold letters on it. Miss Fitzroy Robinson read:—

Chevalier Doloro De Lara

Professor of Magic (white)

and the Black Art.

Pupils instructed at their own residences.

No extras.

Special terms for Schools. Evening Parties

attended.

Miss Fitzroy Robinson laid down her book—she never taught without a book—smoothed her yellow cap and her grey curls and went into the front parlour to see her visitor. He bowed low at sight of her. He was very tall and hungry-looking, with black eyes, and an indescribable mouth.

“It is indeed a pleasure,” said he, smiling so as to show every one of his thirty-two teeth—a very polite, but very difficult thing to do—“it is indeed a pleasure to meet once more my old pupil.”

“The pleasure is mutual, I am sure,” said Miss Fitzroy Robinson. If it is sometimes impossible to be polite and truthful at the same moment, that is not my fault, nor Miss Fitzroy Robinson’s.

“I have been travelling about,” said the Professor, still smiling immeasurably, “increasing my stock of wisdom. Ah, dear lady—we live and learn, do we not? And now I am really a far more competent teacher than when I had the honour of instructing you. May I hope for an engagement as Professor in your Academy?”

“I have not yet been able to arrange for a regular course of Magic,” said the schoolmistress; “it is a subject in which parents, especially royal ones, take but too little interest.”

“It was your favourite study,” said the professor.

“Yes—but—well, no doubt some day——”

“But I want an engagement now,” said he, looking hungrier than ever; “a thousand pounds for thirteen lessons—to you, dear lady.”

“It’s quite impossible,” said she, and she spoke firmly, for she knew from history how dangerous it is for a Magician to be allowed anywhere near a princess. Some harm almost always comes of it.

“Oh, very well!” said the Professor.

“You see my pupils are all princesses,” she went on, “they don’t require the use of magic, they can get all they want without it.”

“Then it’s ‘No’?” said he.

“It’s ‘No thank you kindly,’” said she.

Then, before she could stop him, he sprang past her out at the door, and she heard his boots on the oilcloth of the passage. She flew after him just in time to have the schoolroom door slammed and locked in her face.

“Well, I never!” said Miss Fitzroy Robinson. She hastened to the top of the house and hurried down the schoolroom chimney, which had been made with steps, in case of fire or other emergency. She stepped out of the grate on to the schoolroom hearthrug just one second too late. The seven Princesses were all gone, and the Professor of Magic stood alone among the ink-stained desks, smiling the largest smile Miss Fitzroy Robinson had seen yet.

“Oh, you naughty, bad, wicked man, you!” said she, shaking the school ruler at him.

·····

The next day was Saturday, and the King of the country called as usual to take his daughter Daisy out to spend her half holiday. The servant who opened the door had a coarse apron on and cinders in her hair, and the King thought it was sackcloth and ashes, and said so a little anxiously, but the girl said, “No, I’ve only been a-doing of the kitchen range—though, for the matter of that—but you’d best see missus herself.”

So the King was shown into the best parlour where the tasteful wax-flowers were, and the antimacassars and water-colour drawings executed by the pupils, and the wool mats which Miss Fitzroy Robinson’s bed-ridden aunt made so beautifully. A delightful parlour full of the traces of the refining touch of a woman’s hand.

Miss Fitzroy Robinson came in slowly and sadly. Her gown was neatly made of sack-cloth—with an ingenious trimming of small cinders sewn on gold braid—and some larger-sized cinders dangled by silken threads from the edge of her lace cap.

The King saw at once that she was annoyed about something. “I hope I’m not too early,” said he.

“Your Majesty,” she answered, “not at all. You are always punctual, as stated in your references. Something has happened. I will not aggravate your misfortunes by breaking them to you. Your daughter Daisy, the pride and treasure of our little circle, has disappeared. Her six royal companions are with her. For the present all are safe, but at the moment I am unable to lay my hand on any one of the seven.”

The King sat down heavily on part of the handsome walnut and rep suite (ladies’ and gentlemen’s easy-chairs, couch and six occasional chairs) and gasped miserably. He could not find words. But the schoolmistress had written down what she was going to say on a slate and learned it off by heart, so she was able to go on fluently.

“Your Majesty, I am not wholly to blame—hang me if I am—I mean hang me if you must; but first allow me to have the honour of offering to you one or two explanatory remarks.”

With this she sat down and told him the whole story of the Professor’s visit, only stopping exactly where I stopped when I was telling it to you just now.

The King listened, plucking nervously at the fringe of a purple and crimson antimacassar.

“I never was satisfied with the Professor’s methods,” said Miss Fitzroy Robinson sadly; “and I always had my doubts as to his moral character, doubts now set at rest for ever. After concluding my course of instruction with him some years ago I took a series of lessons from a far more efficient master, and thanks to those lessons, which were, I may mention, extremely costly, I was mercifully enabled to put a spoke in the wheel of the unprincipled ruffian——”

“Did you save the Princesses?” cried the King.

“No; but I can if your Majesty and the other parents will leave the matter entirely in my hands.”

“It’s rather a serious matter,” said the King; “my poor little Daisy——”

“I would ask you,” said the schoolmistress with dignity, “not to attach too much importance to this event. Of course it is regrettable, but unpleasant accidents occur in all schools, and the consequences of them can usually be averted by the exercise of tact and judgment.”

“I ought to hang you, you know,” said the King doubtfully.

“No doubt,” said Miss Fitzroy Robinson, “and if you do you’ll never see your Daisy again. Your duty as a parent—yes—and your duty to me—conflicting duties are very painful things.”

“But can I trust you?”

“I may remind you,” said she, drawing herself up so that the cinders rattled again, “that we exchanged satisfactory references at the commencement of our business relations.”

The King rose. “Well, Miss Fitzroy Robinson,” he said, “I have been entirely satisfied with Daisy’s progress since she has been in your charge, and I feel I cannot do better than leave this matter entirely in your able hands.”

The schoolmistress made him a curtsey, and he went back to his marble palace a broken-hearted monarch, with his crown all on one side and his poor, dear nose red with weeping.

The select boarding establishment was shut up.

Time went on and no news came of the lost Princesses.

The King found but little comfort in the fact that his other child, Prince Denis, was still spared to him. Denis was all very well and a nice little boy in his way, but a boy is not a girl.

The Queen was much more broken-hearted than the King, but of course she had the housekeeping to see to and the making of the pickles and preserves and the young Prince’s stockings to knit, so she had not much time for weeping, and after a year she said to the King—

“My dear, you ought to do something to distract your mind. It’s unkinglike to sit and cry all day. Now, do make an effort; do something useful, if it’s only opening a bazaar or laying a foundation stone.”

“I am frightened of bazaars,” said the King; “they are like bees—they buzz and worry; but foundation stones——” And after that he began to sit and think sometimes, without crying, and to make notes on the backs of old envelopes. So the Queen felt that she had not spoken quite in vain.

A month later the suggestion of foundation stones bore fruit.

The King floated a company, and Fortunatus Rex & Co. became almost at once the largest speculative builders in the world.

Perhaps you do not know what a speculative builder is. I’ll tell you what the King and his Co. did, and then you will know.

They bought all the pretty woods and fields they could get and cut them up into squares, and grubbed up the trees and the grass and put streets there and lamp-posts and ugly little yellow brick houses, in the hopes that people would want to live in them. And curiously enough people did. So the King and his Co. made quite a lot of money.

It is curious that nearly all the great fortunes are made by turning beautiful things into ugly ones. Making beauty out of ugliness is very ill-paid work.

The ugly little streets crawled further and further out of the town, eating up the green country like greedy yellow caterpillars, but at the foot of the Clover Hill they had to stop. For the owner of Clover Hill would not sell any land at all—for any price that Fortunatus Rex & Co. could offer. In vain the solicitors of the Company called on the solicitors of the owner, wearing their best cloaks and swords and shields, and took them out to lunch and gave them nice things to eat and drink. Clover Hill was not for sale.

At last, however, a little old woman all in grey called at the Company’s shining brass and mahogany offices and had a private interview with the King himself.

“I am the owner of Clover Hill,” said she, “and you may build on all its acres except the seven at the top and the fifteen acres that go round that seven, and you must build me a high wall round the seven acres and another round the fifteen—of red brick, mind; none of your cheap yellow stuff—and you must make a brand new law that any one who steals my fruit is to be hanged from the tree he stole it from. That’s all. What do you say?”

The King said “Yes,” because since his trouble he cared for nothing but building, and his royal soul longed to see the green Clover Hill eaten up by yellow brick caterpillars with slate tops. He did not at all like building the two red brick walls, but he did it.

Now, the old woman wanted the walls and the acres to be this sort of shape—

But it was such a bother getting the exact amount of ground into the two circles that all the surveyors tore out their hair by handfuls, and at last the King said, “Oh bother! Do it this way,” and drew a plan on the back of an old Act of Parliament. So they did, and it was like this—

The old lady was very vexed when she found that there was only one wall between her orchard and the world, as you see was the case at the corner where the two 1’s and the 15 meet; but the King said he couldn’t afford to build it all over again and that she’d got her two walls as she had said. So she had to put up with it. Only she insisted on the King’s getting her a fierce bull-dog to fly at the throat of any one who should come over the wall at that weak point where the two 1’s join on to the 15. So he got her a stout bull-dog whose name was Martha, and brought it himself in a jewelled leash.

“Martha will fly at any one who is not of kingly blood,” said he. “Of course she wouldn’t dream of biting a royal person; but, then, on the other hand, royal people don’t rob orchards.”

So the old woman had to be contented. She tied Martha up in the unprotected corner of her inner enclosure and then she planted little baby apple trees and had a house built and sat down in it and waited.

And the King was almost happy. The creepy, crawly yellow caterpillars ate up Clover Hill—all except the little green crown on the top, where the apple trees were and the two red brick walls and the little house and the old woman.

The poor Queen went on seeing to the jam and the pickles and the blanket washing and the spring cleaning, and every now and then she would say to her husband—

“Fortunatus, my love, do you really think Miss Fitzroy Robinson is trustworthy? Shall we ever see our Daisy again?”

And the King would rumple his fair hair with his hands till it stuck out like cheese straws under his crown, and answer—

“My dear, you must be patient; you know we had the very highest references.”

Now one day the new yellow brick town the King had built had a delightful experience. Six handsome Princes on beautiful white horses came riding through the dusty little streets. The housings of their chargers shone with silver embroidery and gleaming glowing jewels, and their gold armour flashed so gloriously in the sun that all the little children clapped their hands, and the Princes’ faces were so young and kind and handsome that all the old women said: “Bless their pretty hearts!”

Now, of course, you will not need to be told that these six Princes were looking for the six grown-up Princesses who had been so happy at the Select Boarding Establishment. Their six Royal fathers, who lived many years’ journey away on the other side of the world, and had not yet heard that the Princesses were mislaid, had given Miss Fitzroy Robinson’s address to these Princes, and instructed them to marry the six Princesses without delay, and bring them home.

But when they got to the Select Boarding Establishment for the Daughters of Respectable Monarchs, the house was closed, and a card was in the window, saying that this desirable villa residence was to be let on moderate terms, furnished or otherwise. The wax fruit under the glass shade still showed attractively through the dusty panes. The six Princes looked through the window by turns. They were charmed with the furniture, and the refining touch of a woman’s hand drew them like a magnet. They took the house, but they had their meals at the Palace by the King’s special invitation.

King Fortunatus told the Princes the dreadful story of the disappearance of the entire Select School; and each Prince swore by his sword-hilt and his honour that he would find out the particular Princess that he was to marry, or perish in the attempt. For, of course, each Prince was to marry one Princess, mentioned by name in his instructions, and not one of the others.

The first night that the Princes spent in the furnished house passed quietly enough, so did the second and the third and the fourth, fifth and sixth, but on the seventh night, as the Princes sat playing spilikins in the schoolroom, they suddenly heard a voice that was not any of theirs. It said, “Open up Africa!”

The Princes looked here, there, and everywhere—but they could see no one. They had not been brought up to the exploring trade, and could not have opened up Africa if they had wanted to.

“Or cut through the Isthmus of Panama,” said the voice again.

Now, as it happened, none of the six Princes were engineers. They confessed as much.

“Cut up China, then!” said the voice, desperately.

“It’s like the ghost of a Tory newspaper,” said one of the Princes.

And then suddenly they knew that the voice came from one of the pair of globes which hung in frames at the end of the schoolroom. It was the terrestrial globe.

“I’m inside,” said the voice; “I can’t get out. Oh, cut the globe—anywhere—and let me out. But the African route is most convenient.”

Prince Primus opened up Africa with his sword, and out tumbled half a Professor of Magic.

“My other half’s in there,” he said, pointing to the Celestial globe. “Let my legs out, do——”

But Prince Secundus said, “Not so fast,” and Prince Tertius said, “Why were you shut up?”

“I was shut up for as pretty a bit of parlour-magic as ever you saw in all your born days,” said the top half of the Professor of Magic.

“Oh, you were, were you?” said Prince Quartus; “well, your legs aren’t coming out just yet. We want to engage a competent magician. You’ll do.”

“But I’m not all here,” said the Professor.

“Quite enough of you,” said Prince Quintus.

“Now look here,” said Prince Sextus; “we want to find our six Princesses. We can give a very good guess as to how they were lost; but we’ll let bygones be bygones. You tell us how to find them, and after our weddings we’ll restore your legs to the light of day.”

“This half of me feels so faint,” said the half Professor of Magic.

“What are we to do?” said all the Princes, threateningly; “if you don’t tell us, you shall never have a leg to stand on.”

“Steal apples,” said the half Professor, hoarsely, and fainted away.

They left him lying on the bare boards between the inkstained desks, and off they went to steal apples. But this was not so easy. Because Fortunatus Rex & Co. had built, and built, and built, and apples do not grow freely in those parts of the country which have been “opened up” by speculative builders.

So at last they asked the little Prince Denis where he went for apples when he wanted them. And Denis said—

“The old woman at the top of Clover Hill has apples in her seven acres, and in her fifteen acres, but there’s a fierce bulldog in the seven acres, and I’ve stolen all the apples in the fifteen acres myself.”

“We’ll try the seven acres,” said the Princes.

“Very well,” said Denis; “You’ll be hanged if you’re caught. So, as I put you up to it, I’m coming too, and if you won’t take me, I’ll tell. So there!”

For Denis was a most honourable little Prince, and felt that you must not send others into danger unless you go yourself, and he would never have stolen apples if it had not been quite as dangerous as leading armies.

So the Princes had to agree, and the very next night Denis let himself down out of his window by a knotted rope made of all the stockings his mother had knitted for him, and the grown-up Princes were waiting under the window, and off they all went to the orchard on the top of Clover Hill.

They climbed the wall at the proper corner, and Martha, the bulldog, who was very wellbred, and knew a Prince when she saw one, wagged her kinked tail respectfully and wished them good luck.

The Princes stole over the dewy orchard grass and looked at tree after tree: there were no apples on any of them.

Only at last, in the very middle of the orchard there was a tree with a copper trunk and brass branches, and leaves of silver. And on it hung seven beautiful golden apples.

So each Prince took one of the golden apples, very quietly, and off they went, anxious to get back to the half-Professor of Magic, and learn what to do next. No one had any doubt as to the half-Professor having told the truth; for when your legs depend on your speaking the truth you will not willingly tell a falsehood.

They stole away as quietly as they could, each with a gold apple in his hand, but as they went Prince Denis could not resist his longing to take a bite out of his apple. He opened his mouth very wide so as to get a good bite, and the next moment he howled aloud, for the apple was as hard as stone, and the poor little boy had broken nearly all his first teeth.

He flung the apple away in a rage, and the next moment the old woman rushed out of her house. She screamed. Martha barked. Prince Denis howled. The whole town was aroused, and the six Princes were arrested, and taken under a strong guard to the Tower. Denis was let off, on the ground of his youth, and, besides, he had lost most of his teeth, which is a severe punishment, even for stealing apples.

The King sat in his Hall of Justice next morning, and the old woman and the Princes came before him. When the story had been told, he said—

“My dear fellows, I hope you’ll excuse me—the laws of hospitality are strict—but business is business after all. I should not like to have any constitutional unpleasantness over a little thing like this; you must all be hanged to-morrow morning.”

The Princes were extremely vexed, but they did not make a fuss. They asked to see Denis, and told him what to do.

So Denis went to the furnished house which had once been a Select Boarding Establishment for the Daughters of Respectable Monarchs. The door was locked, but Denis knew a way in, because his sister had told him all about it one holiday. He got up on the roof and walked down the schoolroom chimney.

There, on the schoolroom floor, lay half a Professor of Magic, struggling feebly, and uttering sad, faint squeals.

“What are we to do now?” said Denis.

“Steal apples,” said the half-Professor in a weak whisper. “Do let my legs out. Slice up the Great Bear—or the Milky Way would be a good one for them to come out by.”

But Denis knew better.

“Not till we get the lost Princesses,” said he, “now, what’s to be done?”

“Steal apples I tell you,” said the half-Professor, crossly; “seven apples—there—seven kisses. Cut them down. Oh go along with you, do. Leave me to die, you heartless boy. I’ve got pins and needles in my legs.”

Then off ran Denis to the Seven Acre Orchard at the top of Clover Hill, and there were the six Princes hanging to the apple-tree, and the hangman had gone home to his dinner, and there was no one else about. And the Princes were not dead.

Denis climbed up the tree and cut the Princes down with the penknife of the gardener’s boy. (You will often find this penknife mentioned in your German exercises; now you know why so much fuss is made about it.)

The Princes fell to the ground, and when they recovered their wits Denis told them what he had done.

“Oh why did you cut us down?” said the Princes, “we were having such happy dreams.”

“Well,” said Denis, shutting up the penknife of the gardener’s boy, “of all the ungrateful chaps!” And he turned his back and marched off. But they ran quickly after him and thanked him and told him how they had been dreaming of walking arm in arm with the most dear and lovely Princesses in the world.

“Well,” said Denis, “it’s no use dreaming about them. You’ve got your own registered Princesses to find, and the half-Professor says, ‘Steal apples.’”

“There aren’t any more to steal,” said the Princes—but when they looked, there were the gold apples back on the tree just as before.

So once again they each picked one. Denis chose a different one this time. He thought it might be softer. The last time he had chosen the biggest apple—but now he took the littlest apple of all.

“Seven kisses!” he cried, and began to kiss the little gold apple.

Each Prince kissed the apple he held, till the sound of kisses was like the whisper of the evening wind in leafy trees. And, of course, at the seventh kiss each Prince found that he had in his hand not an apple, but the fingers of a lovely Princess. As for Denis, he had got his little sister Daisy, and he was so glad he promised at once to give her his guinea-pigs and his whole collection of foreign postage stamps.

“What is your name, dear and lovely lady?” asked Prince Primus.

“Sexta,” said his Princess. And then it turned out that every single one of the Princes had picked the wrong apple, so that each one had a Princess who was not the one mentioned in his letter of instructions. Secundus had plucked the apple that held Quinta, and Tertius held Quarta, and so on—and everything was as criss-cross-crooked as it possibly could be.

And yet nobody wanted to change.

Then the old woman came out of her house and looked at them and chuckled, and she said—

“You must be contented with what you have.”

“We are,” said all twelve of them, “but what about our parents?”

“They must put up with your choice,” said the old woman, “it’s the common lot of parents.”

“I think you ought to sort yourselves out properly,” said Denis; “I’m the only one who’s got his right Princess—because I wasn’t greedy. I took the smallest.”

The tallest Princess showed him a red mark on her arm, where his little teeth had been two nights before, and everybody laughed.

But the old woman said—

“They can’t change, my dear. When a Prince has picked a gold apple that has a Princess in it, and has kissed it till she comes out, no other Princess will ever do for him, any more than any other Prince will ever do for her.”

While she was speaking the old woman got younger and younger and younger, till as she spoke the last words she was quite young, not more than fifty-five. And it was Miss Fitzroy Robinson!

Her pupils stepped forward one by one with respectful curtsies, and she allowed them to kiss her on the cheek, just as if it was breaking-up day.

Then, all together, and very happily, they went down to the furnished villa that had once been the Select School, and when the half-professor had promised on his honour as a Magician to give up Magic and take to a respectable trade, they took his legs out of the starry sphere, and gave them back to him; and he joined himself together, and went off full of earnest resolve to live and die an honest plumber.

“My talents won’t be quite wasted,” said he; “a little hanky-panky is useful in most trades.”

When the King asked Miss Fitzroy Robinson to name her own reward for restoring the Princesses, she said—

“Make the land green again, your Majesty.”

So Fortunatus Rex & Co. devoted themselves to pulling down and carting off the yellow streets they had built. And now the country there is almost as green and pretty as it was before Princess Daisy and the six parlour-boarders were turned into gold apples.

“It was very clever of dear Miss Fitzroy Robinson to shut up that Professor in those two globes,” said the Queen; “it shows the advantage of having lessons from the best Masters.”

“Yes,” said the King, “I always say that you cannot go far wrong if you insist on the highest references!”

---

THE SUMS THAT CAME RIGHT

THE SUMS THAT CAME RIGHT

“IF twenty-seven barrelsful of apples cost £25 13s. 3d., what would the same barrels be worth if they had been packed by a dishonest person, who only put in 7/9ths of apples in each barrel and the rest sawdust?”

This was the sum.

It does not look very hard, perhaps, to you who have studied ardently for years at a Board School, or a High School, or a Preparatory School for the sons of gentlemen; but to Edwin it looked as hard as a ship’s biscuit. But he went for it like a man, and presently produced an Answer and his Master wrote a big curly R across the sum. Perhaps you do not know that a big curly R means Right? As for the answer to the sum, I will try to get a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge (who is a very terrible person), to work it out for you, and if he can do it I will put the answer at the end of this story. I cannot work it myself.

Edwin was glad to see the large curly R. He saw it so seldom that to meet it was a real pleasure.

“But what’s the use?” he said. “Everything else leads to something else, except lessons. If you put seeds in the garden they come up flowers, unless they’re rotten seeds or you forget where you put them. And if you buy a rabbit—well, there it is, unless it dies. And if you eat your dinner—well, you’re not hungry any more for an hour or two. But lessons!”

He bit his penholder angrily and put his head into his desk to look for nibs to play Simpkins minor with. You know the game of nibs, of course? He held up the lid of the desk on his head, as I daresay you have often done, and the inside of the desk was darkish, so that the sudden light at the very back of the desk showed quite brightly and unmistakably.

“Those firework fusees, O Crikey!” was Edwin’s first thought.

But it was no firework fusee. It was like glow-worms, only a thousand times more bright and white. For it was the light of pure reason, and it glowed from the glorious eyes of the Arithmetic Fairy. You did not know that there was an Arithmetic Fairy? If you knew as much as I do, it would be simply silly for me to try to tell you stories, wouldn’t it?

Her wonderful eyes gleamed and flashed straight into the round goggling eyes of the amazed Edwin.

“Upon my word!” she said.

Edwin said nothing.

“Did no one ever tell you?” the fairy went on, shaking out her dress, which was woven of the integral calculus, and trimmed with a dazzling fringe of logarithms. “Did no one ever tell you that the things that happen when you’ve done your sums right, happen when you’re grown up?”

“I don’t care what happens then,” Edwin dared to say, for the flashing eyes were kind eyes. “I shall be a pirate, or a bushranger, or something.”

The fairy drew herself up, and her graceful garland of simple equations trembled as Edwin breathed heavily.

“A Pirate,” said she, “a nice sort of pirate who can’t calculate his men’s share of the plunder to three-seventeenths of a gold link of the dead captain’s chain! A fine bushranger who can’t arrange the forty-two bullets from the revolvers of his seven dauntless followers so that each of the fifteen enemies gets his fair share! Go along with you!” said the Arithmetic Fairy.

But Edwin’s eyes were, as I said, wide open, goggling.

“I say,” he suddenly remarked, “how jolly pretty you are.”

The Arithmetic Fairy has but one weakness—a feminine weakness. She loves a pretty speech. If blunt, so much the worse; yet even bluntness....

She looked down and played shyly with the bunch of miscellaneous examples in vulgar fractions which adorned her waistband.

“I suppose you can’t be expected to understand, yet,” she said, and she said it very gently.

Edwin took courage.

“When I do things I want something to happen at once. ‘I want a white rabbit and I want it now.’”

She did not recognise the quotation.

“Get your Master to set you a little simple multiplication sum in white rabbits,” she said. “Goodbye, my child. You’ll know me better in time, and as you know me better you’ll love me more.”

“I ... you’re lovely now,” said Edwin.

The Fairy laughed, and spread her dazzling wings glistening with all the glories of the higher mathematics.

Edwin closed dazzled eyes, and opened them as the desk lid shut down on his head, swayed by no uncertain hand. It was the mathematical master’s hand, in fact.

A new example was set. And, curiously enough, white rabbits were in it.

“If seven thousand five hundred and sixty-three white rabbits,” it began. Edwin, his brain in a whirl, worked it correctly, by a sort of inspiration, like an ancient prophet or a calculating machine.

When he returned, with his books in a strap, to the red villa whose gables meant home for him, he found an excited crowd dancing round the white-painted gates.

The whole of the front garden, as well as most of the back garden, was a seething mass of white rabbits. Seven thousand five hundred and sixty-three there were, to be exact. I alone know this. The joyous Edwin and his distracted parents were never able to count them.

“What a lot of hutches we shall want,” Edwin thought gaily. But when his father came home from the Stock Exchange, where he spent his days in considering 7⅝ and 10-3/32—no doubt under the direct guidance of the Arithmetic Fairy, he said at once—

“Send for the poulterer.”

This was done. Only one pair of white rabbits remained the property of Edwin, but these, by the power of the Arithmetic Fairy, became ten by Christmas.

The rabbits disposed of, peace spread a longing wing over the villa, but was not allowed to settle.

“Oh, please ’m,” the startled cook, cap all crooked, exclaimed in the hall, “the cellar is choke-full of apples—most of ’em bad ’m—I never see no one deliver them, nor yet give no receipt.”

The cook, for once in a lurid career, spoke truth. The cellar was full of apples. Nineteen pounds nineteen and twopence and one-third of a pennyworth—to be accurate.

Edwin went to bed, feeling now quite sure that he had not dreamed the Arithmetic Fairy, and anxiously wondering what to-morrow’s sums would be about. Not, he trusted, about snakes, or Sunday School teachers.

The next day’s sum was about oranges. Edwin did it correctly, and went home a prey to the most golden apprehensions. Nor were these unfounded. The whole of the dining-room and most of the hall—up to the seventh step of the neatly carpeted stairs, was golden with oranges. Edwin’s father said some severe things about practical jokers, and sent for the greengrocer. Edwin ate nine 3/7th oranges, and went to bed yellow, but not absolutely unhappy.

But now he was quite sure.

On the following day his sum dealt with elephants, and in such numbers that his father, on returning from business, yielded to a very natural annoyance, and gave notice to his landlord that he should, at Lady Day, leave a villa where elephants and oranges occurred to such an extent.

No one suspected Edwin of having anything to do with these happenings. And indeed, it was not his fault, so how and why could or should he have owned up to it?

I wish I had time to tell you of the events that occurred when Edwin’s sums were set in buttered muffins. Of the seventy-five pigs travelling in a circle at varying rates, I can only say that part of this circle ran through Edwin’s mother’s drawing-room. Nor can I here relate the tale of the three hundred lightning conductors which were suddenly found to be attached to the once happy villa-home. Edwin’s mother cried all day when she was not laughing, and people came from far and near to see the haunted house. For when it came to four thousand white owls and a church steeple every one felt that it was more than a mere accident.

Edwin’s master had a pretty taste in sums, and about once a term he used to set a sum about canes. Edwin worked that sum wrong on purpose, so I suppose it served him right that the canes should be at home before he was, just as they would have been if he had worked the sum properly, and as he had borrowed his father’s razor that morning to sharpen a slate-pencil, the fifty-seven canes were not all thrown away.

But it was the sum about the cistern that convinced Edwin of the desperate need of finding the Arithmetic Fairy, and begging her to take back the present she had made him. It is not polite to ask this, but Edwin had to do it. You see in the sum the cistern had to leak three pints in thirteen minutes and a quarter, but the cistern at home happened to have a little leak of its own already, where Edwin had tried his new drill on it, and the two leaks together managed so well that when Edwin got home he found water dripping from all the top bedroom ceilings and the staircase was a sort of Niagara. It was very exciting—but when the plumber came he let Edwin’s father know all about the little drilled hole, and Edwin got the credit of the leak in the sum, which was much larger and most unfair. His father spoke to Edwin about this matter in his study, and it was then that Edwin saw that he must put an end to the sums that came true.

So he went up to his bedroom with his candle and his arithmetic book. Directly he put the candle on the chest of drawers a big splash of water from the ceiling fell right on the flame and it went out. He had to go right down stairs to get another light. Then he put the candle on the dressing table—splash—out it went. Chair. Splash! Out! At last he got the candle to stay alight on the washhand-stand, which was, by some curious accident, the only dry place in the room.

Then he opened his book. Somewhere in the book he knew there must be something that would fetch the fairy. He said the Multiplication Table up to nine times-after that, as you know, the worst is over. But no fairy appeared.

Then he read aloud the instructions for working the different rules, including the examples given. There was no result.

Then he called to the Fairy—but she did not come.

Then he tried counting. Then counting and calling mixed with other things. Like this:

“Oh, good Fairy! One-two-three-four-five-six-seven; do come and help me! Eight-nine-ten-eleven! Beautiful, dear, kind, lovely fairy! Nine nines are eighty-one! Dear fairy, do come! Seven million two hundred thousand six hundred and fifty-nine! I will always love you if you will come to me now. Three-sevenths of five-ninths of five-twelfths of sixteen-fiftieths. You were so kind the other day. Two and two are four, and three are seven! Do come now—you’ve no idea what an awful mess you’ve got me into. Seven nines are sixty-three—though I know you meant it kindly. Dear Fairy. Thirteen from thirty-seven leaves twenty-four. Do come and see what a hole I’m in—do come—and the product will give you the desired result!”

Edwin stopped, out of breath. He looked round him for the Fairy. But his room, with the water dripping from the roof and the wet towels and basins on the floor, was not a fairy-like place. Edwin saw, with a sigh, that it was no go.

“I’ll have another go in prep to-morrow,” he said. This he did.

The Mathematical Master was pleased with himself that day because he had succeeded in preventing his best boy from yielding to the allurements of the Head-master and the Classical side.

Of course his class knew at once what kind of temper the Mathematical Master was in—you know we always know that—and Edwin ventured to ask that the examples that day might be about a model steam engine.

“Only one, sir, please,” he was careful to explain. The Master kindly consented, and by great good fortune the example did not deal with a faulty boiler, nor with any other defect—but concerned itself solely with the model engine’s speed. So Edwin knew, when he had worked his sum, exactly what pace the model engine he would find at home would be good for. He worked the sum right.

Then he put his head into his desk and began again.

“Oh, good Fairy, if a sum of £4,700 is to be divided between A, B, and C,—do, do come and help me. Three-tenths of a pound is six shillings, dear Fairy—eleven—twelve—thirteen—fourteen—oh, lovely Fairy—” and so on.

But no Fairy came. And Simpkins minor whispered—

“What are you chunnering about?” and stuck a pin into Edwin’s leg. “Can’t you do the beastly example?”

Then quite suddenly Edwin knew what he had to do. He made up an example for himself. This was it.

“If 7,535 fairies were in my desk at school and I subtracted 710 and added 1,006, and the rest flew away in 783 equal gangs, how many would be left over in the desk?”

When he had worked it the answer was one. Very quickly he opened his desk again, and there was the Arithmetic Fairy, looking more lovely than ever in a rich gown of indices, lined with surds, that fell to her feet in osculating curves. In her hand, like a sceptre, shone the starry glory of the binomial theorem. But her eyes were starrier still. She smiled, but her first words were severe.

“You careless boy,” she said. “Why can’t you learn to be accurate? It’s the merest chance you got me. You should have stated your problem more clearly, and you should have said seven thousand Arithmetic Fairies. Why suppose you had found one fairy in your desk, and it had been the Grammar Fairy, or the Football Fairy—what would you have done then?”

“Is there a Football Fairy?” Edwin asked.

“Of course. There’s a fairy for everything you have to learn. There’s a Patience Fairy, and a Good-temper Fairy, and a Fairy to teach people to make bread, and another to teach them to make love. Didn’t you really know that?”

“No,” said Edwin, “but I say, look here——”

“I am looking,” she said, fixing her bright eyes on Edwin’s goggling ones, exactly as at their first meeting.

“No—I mean—oh—I say—” he said.

“So I hear,” she said.

“No, but—no kid,” said he.

“Of course there isn’t any kid,” said she.

“Dear, kind, pretty Fairy,” Edwin began again.

“That’s better,” said the Fairy.

“Didn’t you hear all I was saying to you yesterday, when the water was dripping from the ceiling all over the room?”

“From nineteen several spots. Of course I did.”

“Well then,” said Edwin.

“You mean that you’re tired of having things happen when you do your sums correctly? You prefer the old way!”

“Yes, please,” said Edwin, “if you’re sure you don’t mind? I know you meant it for kindness, but, oh, it is most beastly, when you get into the thick of it.” He was thinking of the elephants, I fancy.

“I only did it to please you,” said the Fairy pouting. “I’ll make everything as it was before. Does that please you? And there’s your third wish. You know we always give three wishes. It’s customary in the profession. What would you like?”

Edwin had not attended properly to this speech, so he had only heard “as it was before” and then “What would you like?”

So he said, “I should like to see you again some day.”

The Arithmetic Fairy smiled at him, and her beauty grew more and more radiant. She had not expected this. “I made sure you would ask for a pony or a cricket bat or a pair of white mice,” she said. “You shall see me again, Edwin. Goodbye.”

And the bright vision faded away in a dim mist of rosy permutations.

When Edwin got home he heard that a model engine had been discovered in the larder, and had been given to his younger brother. There are some wrongs, some sorrows, to which even a pen like mine cannot hope to do justice.

·····

Edwin is now a quiet-looking grown-up person in a black frock coat; and his hair is slowly withdrawing itself from the top of his learned head. I suppose it feels itself unworthy to cover so great a brain. The fairy has been with him, unseen, this many a year. The other day he saw her.

He had been Senior Wrangler, of course; that was nothing to Edwin. And he was Astronomer Royal, but that, after all, he had a right to expect.

But it was when he took breath from his researches one day, and suddenly found that he had invented a bran-new Hypernebular Hypothesis—that he thought of the Fairy, and thinking of her, he beheld her. She was lightly poised above a pile of books based on Newton’s “Principia,” and topped with his own latest work, “The Fourth and Further Dimensions.” He knew her at once, and now he appreciated, more than ever in his youth, the radiance of her eyes and of her wings, for now he understood it.

“Dear, beautiful Fairy,” he said, “how glad I am to see you again.”

“I’ve been with you all the time,” she said. “I wish I could do something more for you. Is there anything you want?”

The great Mathematician who was Edwin ran his hand over his thin hair.

“No,” he said, “no.” And then he remembered the school and Simpkins minor and the old desk he used to keep firework fusees in. “Unless,” he added, “you could make me young again.”

She dropped a little tear, clear as a solved problem.

“I can’t do that,” she said. “You can’t have everything. The only person who could do that for you is the Love Fairy. If you had found her instead of me you would have been always young, but you wouldn’t have invented the Hypernebular Hypothesis.”

“I suppose I shall never never find her now?” said Edwin, and as he spoke he looked out of the window to the garden, where a girl was gathering roses.

“I wonder!” said she. “The Love Fairy doesn’t live in schooldesks or books on Fourth Dimensions.”

“I wonder!” said Edwin. “Does the Love Fairy live in gardens?”

“I wonder!” echoed the Arithmetic Fairy, a little sadly, and she spread her bright wings and flew out of the open window and out of this story.

Edwin went out into the rose garden. And did he find the Love Fairy?

I wonder!

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PS.—The Fellow of Trinity says the answer to that sum is nineteen pounds, nineteen shillings and two pence and one-third of a penny.

Does the Fellow of Trinity speak the truth?

I wonder!

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