[Ill.u.s.tration]
Little King Wistful slipped through the palace gates and went out into his kingdom to look for something new. He was only eight years old, so he was not a very big King; but he had been King as long as he could remember, and he had been looking for something new the whole time. Now, his kingdom was entirely made of islands, and in the days when the old King and Queen were alive these islands were known as the Cheerful Isles. But King Wistful changed their name soon after he came to the throne, and insisted on their being called the Monotonous Isles. For, strange as it may sound, this little King of eight years old thought his kingdom was the dullest and the ugliest and the most wearisome place in the world, and nothing that his nurses or his councillors could do ever succeeded in making him laugh and play like other little boys.
"Only look at the stupid things!" muttered his Majesty impatiently, as he stood and surveyed his kingdom from the top of a small, gra.s.sy hillock. "Five round islands in a row; always five round islands in a row! If only some of them were square, it would be something!"
At the bottom of the hill was a wood, one of those pale-green baby woods, where the trees are young and slender and nothing grows very plentifully except the bracken and the heather. And as the King stood and felt sorry for himself at the top of the hill, out from the wood at the bottom of the hill came the sound of a little girl"s voice, singing a quaint little song. And this was the song:--
"Sing-song! Don"t be long!
Wistful, Wistful, come and play!
Sing-song! It"s very wrong To stay and stay and stay away!
The world is much too nice a place To make you pull so long a face; It"s full of people being kind, And full of flowers for you to find; There"s heaps of folks for you to tease And all the naughtiness you please; To sulk is surely waste of time When all those trees are yours to climb!
Ting-a-ring! Make haste, King!
I"ve something really nice to say; Ting-a-ring! A _proper_ King Would not make me sing all day!"
King Wistful thrilled all over with excitement. Was something really going to happen at last? He had hardly time to think, however, before the little singer came out of the wood into the open. She wore a clean white pinafore, and on her head was a large white sunbonnet, and under the sunbonnet were two of the brightest brown eyes the King had ever seen. He stepped down the hill towards her, wondering how anything so pretty and so merry could have come into his kingdom; and at the same instant the little girl saw the King and came running up the hill towards him, so it was not long before they stood together, hand in hand, half-way down the hillside.
"Where did you come from and who are you and how long have you been here?" asked the King, breathlessly.
"I am Eyebright, of course," answered the little girl, smiling; "and I"ve been here always."
"Who taught you to sing that song about me?" demanded the King.
"The magician," answered Eyebright; "and he told me to sing it every day until you came. But you _have_ been a long time coming!"
"I"m very sorry," replied his Majesty, apologetically; "you see, the magician did not tell me to come. In fact, I don"t even know who the magician is."
"Are you not the King, then?" asked Eyebright, opening her great brown eyes as wide as they would go.
The little King felt it was hardly necessary to answer this; but he set his heels together and took off his crown and made her the best bow he had learned at his dancing-cla.s.s, just to show beyond any doubt that he was the King. Eyebright still looked a little doubtful.
"Then how is it that you do not know the magician?" she asked him. "What is the use of being King, if you do not know everybody who lives in your kingdom?"
"It isn"t any use; I never said I wanted to be King, did I?" said his Majesty, a little crossly. It was not pleasant to find that somebody else, and only a little girl in a sunbonnet, knew more about his kingdom than he did.
"What a very funny boy you are!" remarked Eyebright, without noticing his crossness. "I always thought it must be so splendid to be a King, and to have a banquet whenever you like, and never to go out without a procession, and to wear a crown instead of a sunbonnet, and--"
"That"s all you know about it," interrupted the King, somewhat impolitely. "There aren"t any banquets; and when there are, you only have stupid things with long names to eat, and you never know whether to eat them with a fork or a spoon, and it"s always wrong whichever you do.
And if you ask for jumbles or chocolate creams or plum-cake, you"re told you mustn"t spoil your dinner. And all the procession you ever get is a procession of nurses, who won"t even let you step in a puddle if you want to!"
"Dear me," said Eyebright, "you"re no better off than a little boy in an ordinary nursery!"
The little King drew himself up on tiptoe with great dignity. "Some of your remarks are most foolish," he said. "You forget that I have a kingdom of my own as well as a nursery. To be sure," he added sadly, "it is not much to boast of, for it is a very stupid kingdom, and nothing nice ever happens in it."
"What do you mean?" exclaimed Eyebright. "Your kingdom is the nicest kingdom in the whole world!"
King Wistful had managed to keep his temper so far, but this was more than he could bear. "Rubbish!" he cried, completely forgetting his royal manners. "You come up the hill with me, and I"ll show you what a stupid kingdom it is."
So they raced up to the top of the hill and looked down at the five round islands in a row. "There!" said King Wistful. "Did you ever see anything so dull?"
The little girl shook her head. "I think it is all as pretty as it can be," she said. "Look how the sun glints on the cornfields, and see the great red and blue patches of flowers--"
"But they"re always the same flowers," complained his Majesty, yawning.
"They"re supposed to be the same flowers, but they never are," answered Eyebright. "If you were to pick them--"
"Kings never pick flowers," he replied haughtily.
"Perhaps that is why you know so little about them," retorted Eyebright; and his Majesty began to feel he was not getting the best of it.
"Anyhow," he continued hastily, "you must own that the sea never changes."
"Oh!" said Eyebright; "that is because you have not learned the sea properly. It has ever so many different faces, and ever so many different voices, too."
The King turned and stared at her. "Are you a witch?" he asked wonderingly.
"No!" laughed Eyebright, merrily. "If I were, I would make you see things right instead of wrong." Then she suddenly scampered down the hill again. "Come along, _quick_!" she cried. "We"ll go and ask the magician to disenchant you."
King Wistful had to run his hardest to catch her, for the little girl in the sunbonnet certainly knew how to put one foot in front of the other.
But then, a sunbonnet is not so apt to tumble off a person"s head as a crown, and that makes all the difference in a running race.
"Where does the magician live?" he panted, when he came up with her.
"In the middle island," she answered. "We"ll find the boat and follow the river down to the sea." She plunged into the wood as she spoke, and threaded her way through the slender young trees, with his Majesty close at her heels. Sometimes the bracken was as tall as she was, but the boy behind could always see the sunbonnet bobbing up and down just ahead of him, and he followed it until they came out at the other side of the wood and found themselves on the banks of a charming little river. A small round boat like a tub, lined with pink rose-leaves, was waiting for them; and into this they both jumped.
"Oh, oh!" cried Eyebright, jumping up and down with delight. "The fairies are out to-day! Look at them--the purple ones in the loosestrife, and the pink and white ones in the comfrey, and--"
"You"ll upset the boat if you don"t sit still," interrupted the King, who felt cross because he could not see the fairies. "Let me have the oars and I"ll take you down the stream."
"You need not do anything of the sort," said Eyebright; "for this is the boat the magician gave me, and it always takes you wherever you want to go."
So they just sat in the sunshine and floated lazily along, and they dabbled their hands in the water and made their sleeves as wet as they pleased, and they caught at the branches above as they pa.s.sed under them, and they leaned over the side and stretched after everything that grew out of reach; and, in short, if they had not been in a fairy boat, it is very certain that they would have tumbled into the water several times before they reached their journey"s end. Presently, the river widened out into the big calm sea; and after that, the boat quickened its speed and took them across to the middle island in no time at all, for the fairies know well enough that n.o.body wants to dawdle about in an open sea, where there are no tadpoles to catch and no trees that sweep their branches down to meet the water.
When the boat stopped, they found themselves on the edge of a sh.o.r.e covered with sea-lilac and yellow poppies, and wonderful sh.e.l.ls that sang without being put to any one"s ear; and just a little way along the beach was the magician"s cave. There was no doubt about its being the right cave, for over the door of it was written in square acid tablets: "This is the magician"s cave." Besides, the whole cave was dug out of a solid almond rock; and of course, any other person"s cave would have been made of plain rock without any almonds in it.
"Come along," said Eyebright; and the two children walked up the beach and knocked at the magician"s door and went in.
Some people might think that a cave on the sea-sh.o.r.e would be full of draughts and jellyfish and wet shrimps; but this particular cave was just like the nicest room that ever belonged to a castle-in-the-air. The wonder of it was, that whoever went into it found the very things he had never had and always wanted, and none of the things that he had always had and never wanted. So Eyebright immediately found a beautiful story-book, with a coloured picture on every page, and all the sad stories squeezed between the happy stories, so that no one who read it could ever cry for long at a time; while the King found the inside of a clock waiting to be picked to pieces, and an open pocket-knife with a bit of firewood lying handy, and a full-rigged schooner ready to be sailed. And they both saw the dear old magician, sitting in his arm-chair and smiling at them.
He was dressed in a long cloak, that always began by being a green cloak but changed every other minute to a different colour, according to the mood the magician was in; and as he was always in a nice mood, whether it was a sad or a merry one, his cloak always managed to be a nice colour. On his head was a high pointed hat, with crackers sticking out of it and a pattern worked all over it in caramels and preserved cherries; and he wore furry foxgloves on his hands to keep them warm, because he was not so young as he used to be. He had been practising as a magician for over a thousand years, but he did not look very old, for all that; he was what might be called pleasantly old, for he had soft white hair and a curly white beard and a pink complexion like a school-boy"s. That is how a magician grows old when he has always been a jolly magician.
Eyebright ran straight up to him and climbed on his knee and hugged him.
"I"ve brought the King to see you," she announced; "and we want you to be a nice, kind, _lovely_ magician and help him to be disenchanted."
The magician stood up and shook hands with the King, just to make him feel at home; and the boy did not feel shy another minute, and quite forgot that he had never paid a visit before without a procession of nurses to look after him.
"You are very good children to call on me at tea-time," said the magician. "If there is one thing more than another that makes me feel the ache in my bones, it is having tea by myself. Now, would you like to have it on the floor, or shall I call up a table?"