"Don"t be a foolish little boy," said the wymp, calmly. "Take her home and try to see things right yourself."
The King certainly did not take her home, nor himself either; but it is the truth that they both found themselves, the very next minute, standing on the top of the small green hillock and looking down at the kingdom of the Monotonous Isles.
"Hurrah!" shouted King Wistful, waving his crown joyfully. "What a beautiful kingdom I"ve got! Look how the sun glints on the cornfields, and see the great red and blue patches of flowers! Don"t you think it _is_ a beautiful kingdom?" he added, turning to the little girl in the sunbonnet.
Eyebright was distinctly puzzled. She _thought_ she only saw five round islands in a row. But, of course, it was impossible that the King should be mistaken. So she looked once more over the kingdom of the Monotonous Isles and then back at the anxious face of the little King.
"Yes," she said softly, "it is, as you say, a beautiful kingdom." Then she ran down the hill and disappeared among the slender trees of the baby wood, and little King Wistful went home to bed.
There is a Queen now as well as a King of the Monotonous Isles. She has black hair and blue eyes, and she wears a crown instead of a sunbonnet, and she quite agrees with the King whenever he tells her how beautiful their kingdom is. And if this should seem remarkable to some people, it need only be remembered that the Queen sees everything with the King"s eyes.
The Hundredth Princess
There was once a King who was so fond of hunting that all the rabbits in his kingdom were born with their hearts in their mouths. The King would have been extremely surprised to hear this, for, of course, he never hunted anything so small as a rabbit; but rabbits are foolish enough for anything, as all the world knows, and it is certain that the rabbits of the King"s forest would never have had a happy moment to this day, if the Green Enchantress had not suddenly taken it into her head to try and bewitch the King.
Now, the Green Enchantress was very beautiful indeed. She sat all day long at the foot of an old lime-tree in the royal forest, and she was dressed all in green, and she had small white hands and great black eyes and quant.i.ties and quant.i.ties of dark red hair. Every animal in the forest, from the largest wild boar down to the smallest baby-rabbit, was a friend of hers; and it made her dreadfully unhappy when she saw them being killed just to amuse the King. So it was no wonder that she made up her mind, at last, to try and bewitch him; and the first time she tried was on a fine summer evening, when the royal party was riding home from the hunt.
It had been an exceedingly dull hunt that day, for the King had found nothing whatever to kill, and this made him so exceedingly irritable that his followers took care to keep a good way behind him as they rode along. That was how it happened that the King was riding quite alone, when a voice suddenly called out to him from the side of the road.
"Good-evening, King!" said the voice. "Have you had good sport to-day?"
The King pulled up his horse and looked round; and when he saw a wonderful-looking girl all dressed in green, sitting at the foot of an old lime-tree, he did not know quite what to say. He knew very little about girls, for he had spent all his life in killing things, but he had a sort of idea that the girl in green was not much like the princesses who came to court.
"I have had no sport at all," he said at last. "All the animals were hiding to-day."
"No doubt they were," said the Green Enchantress. "So would you be, if people came hunting you with great horrid spears and things!"
She was really laughing at him, but the King had no idea of it. He only looked at her more solemnly than before.
"What do you know about it?" he asked her.
"Perhaps I know more about this forest than you know about the whole of your kingdom," answered the Green Enchantress; and this time she laughed outright. But the King did not mind in the least.
"Perhaps you do," he said simply. "I never pretended to know much. I do not even know why you are laughing. Will you tell me?"
"I am laughing because you know so little," she answered mysteriously, "and because there is so much I could tell you if it pleased me."
"I have no doubt you could," replied the King. "Will it please you to tell me now?"
"I don"t feel inclined to tell you now," said the Green Enchantress.
"How strange!" exclaimed the King. "If I had anything to tell, I should tell it at once; but then, I am not a girl. When will you tell me?"
"Next time you come," laughed the girl in green.
"Next time?" said the King. "Why should I come twice when once would do?"
She did not trouble to answer that at all; and when the King looked again at the old lime-tree, the girl in green had completely disappeared.
"Is there a witch in the forest?" he asked, when his followers came riding up to him.
"There is the Green Enchantress, your Majesty," answered the chief huntsman. "I have never seen her, but they say she is the most beautiful woman in the whole world."
"Indeed!" said the King, in surprise; and he went home and spent the whole of the evening in trying to remember what the girl in green had looked like. He had quite forgotten, however; so the very next morning he stole out of the palace long before any one was awake, and walked as fast as he could in the direction of the old lime-tree. The wild boars and the other animals were most surprised to see him there so early in the day, and they followed him in twos and threes to see what he was going to do. As for the King, he strode on over the dewy gra.s.s and never noticed them at all. And all the while the bracken on either side of him was alive with trembling little rabbits, all squeaking to one another, with their hearts in their mouths,--
"We shall certainly be killed if the King sees us!"
At last he came to the old lime-tree at the side of the road; and there sat the wonderful girl all dressed in green, with her dark red hair falling round her down to the ground. The King would have taken off his crown to her, if he had not come out without it; but he made her a low bow instead, and the Green Enchantress began to laugh.
"Dear me!" she said, "why have you come back again?"
"They told me you were the most beautiful woman in the world, so I came to see if it was true," said the King.
"And now you are here, do you think it is true?" asked the girl in green.
"I suppose so," said the King, doubtfully; "but I don"t know much about girls. If you were a wild boar, now, or----"
"But I"m not a wild boar!" cried the Green Enchantress; and she was so angry at being compared to a wild boar that she promptly threw a spell over the King and tried to turn _him_ into a wild boar. But the King went on being a king, just the same as before, and he had no idea that he was expected to be a wild boar at that very moment.
"When are you going to tell me all the things you know?" he asked her, smiling.
"I have forgotten what there was to tell," said the Green Enchantress, sulkily; and she got up and walked away among the trees. The King wondered what he had done to offend her, and he tried hard to remember whether he had ever offended any of the princesses who came to court; but as none of the princesses who came to court ever thought of showing their feelings, he would not have known if he had.
Meanwhile the Green Enchantress was feeling very cross indeed. "What is the use of being an enchantress if people refuse to be enchanted?" she grumbled; and she ran off as fast as she could to find her G.o.dfather, the magician Smilax, for nothing ever put her into such a good temper as a visit to her G.o.dfather. Now, Smilax was the most amiable magician the world has ever contained, and he lived in an ordinary little cottage with a green door and a white doorstep and a red chimney-pot, and he did not look like a magician at all. All the same, Smilax was by no means a stupid magician, as the rest of the story will show.
"What is the matter?" he asked, when his G.o.dchild ran in at the door.
"Do you want me to teach you a new spell?"
"No, indeed!" cried the Green Enchantress. "I am tired of spells; I want something much better."
"Well, well," said the kind old magician, "let us hear what it is all about, and then we"ll see what we can do."
It was impossible to go on being cross when any one was as good-tempered as Smilax; so his G.o.dchild climbed at once on to the arm of his chair, and sat there with her little white feet dangling, while she told him all about the King who would not turn into a wild boar. "Is it not hard," pouted the Green Enchantress, "that I cannot bewitch the King?"
"Some kings are easier to bewitch than others," remarked the magician, wisely. "Now, what is it you want me to do for you?"
"I want you to make me into a princess," said his G.o.dchild, promptly.
"Then I can go to court and dance with the King! Only think of it!" And she pretended that the poker was the King and danced round the room with it, to show how she should behave when she got to court.
"That"s easily done," said Smilax. "You shall go to court and dance with the King, if you like; and I will make you so fine a princess that the King will not be able to distinguish you from all the other princesses in the palace!"
"But I don"t want to be like all the other princesses, G.o.dfather; I want to be a _real_ princess," objected the Green Enchantress.
Smilax shook his head. "Then I cannot help you," he said. "n.o.body can make a real princess,--not even the Fairy Queen herself. Real princesses make themselves, and that is a very different matter."