All the Way to Fairyland Part 15

I mean to find her--here's my hand!

I want the doll from Fairyland.

"The song I'm singing--let me mention-- Is not a song of my invention; It comes like steamboats sometimes do, Like real balloons and cannons too; It comes like all that's real and grand, All the way from Fairyland!"

"Why," said Prince Perfection, "one would almost think you had made up the song on purpose for me!"

What the birch tree thought about it has never been known, for when the little Prince looked up again it had gone away to nowhere at all.

The soldier without a head let the drawbridge down, when he heard the song that had come all the way from Fairyland. The Prince did not stop to thank him, but hastened into the fort and looked round anxiously for the Lady Emmelina. He had very little difficulty in finding her, however, for she occupied nearly the whole of the ground floor. She was sitting up against the wall, supported on one side by an ambulance waggon, and on the other by a camp-fire which, strange to say, had not even singed her elegant fan, although it burned with the brightest of red and yellow flames.

"There you are! Will you come home with me?" said the Prince, rather nervously; for he was not much bigger than she was, now, and he was a little afraid lest she should have unpleasant recollections of the neat round hole lined with green moss. To his relief, she seemed quite glad to see him.

"To be sure I will," said the Lady Emmelina. "I should not be fit to be seen if I stayed much longer in this dusty old place!"

So they went home together, and of course that did not take them long, for the way home is always the shortest way in the world. To begin with, the balloon was waiting for them as they came out of the fort; and it carried them all the way to the sea-sh.o.r.e before they had time to notice that they were in a balloon at all. When they reached the sea-sh.o.r.e they found that the steamboat was waiting for them, too; and the steamboat landed them on the opposite side of the sea even before they knew that they had stepped out of the balloon; and after that the Prince never knew what did happen, for the next thing he noticed was that he had grown to his proper size again, and was standing once more in the royal nursery with the Lady Emmelina tucked under his arm.

There at the table in the middle of the room sat the little Princess Pansy, and in front of her was a large bowl of bread and milk.

"Oh! Oh! You have come back at last!" cried the Princess, jumping down from her chair. "I am so glad, I am so glad!"

"I thought you would be glad to see her again," said Prince Perfection, and he handed her the doll from Fairyland.

"I didn't mean _that_!" exclaimed the little Princess. And then, sad as it is to relate, they both forgot all about the Lady Emmelina; and the next minute, she found herself lying face downwards on the floor, while the Prince and Princess hugged each other. And it was of no use for the royal nurses to talk about bread and milk, for not a thing would the two children touch until they had talked as much as they wanted.

"You will not cry any more, now that you have the Lady Emmelina to play with, will you?" said Prince Perfection, who, strange to say, did not feel in the least bit jealous of the Lady Emmelina as long as she lay face downwards on the floor.

"I don't think I want to play with the Lady Emmelina much," answered Princess Pansy. "I think I would rather play with you. It has been so dull while you have been away." For, although the Prince did not know it, he had been away for a whole month.

"I am delighted to hear it," cried the little Prince. "Let us play at Royal Executioner, and _you_ shall be executioner."

"Oh, no," said the little Princess. "I would _much_ sooner be executed."

As they disputed the point politely, the gra.s.shopper suddenly jumped in at the window and nodded at them.

"Good-day to you," he said. "I was just thinking at that moment about a steamboat and a cannon and a real balloon. Strange, wasn't it?"

Immediately the Prince found a steamboat in his right hand and a cannon in his left; while outside the window floated a charming balloon, just large enough for himself and Princess Pansy.

"Wait a minute," cried the Prince, as the gra.s.shopper jumped on to the window-sill again. "I want to tell you all about--"

"No need to do that," chuckled the gra.s.shopper. "You don't suppose I've been a crab and a gorse bush and an iceberg and a silver birch tree for nothing, do you?"

That time he really hopped away to nowhere at all, and the children have never seen him since. This does not matter in the least, however, for they are not likely to want his help again; the Lady Emmelina is always kept in her proper place now, and the Princess is no longer bewitched by her. It is only reasonable to suppose that the Fairy Zigzag had something to do with the change in the Lady Emmelina, but the Fairy Zigzag says that she never troubled herself about it at all.

However that may be, the children have never had an unhappy moment since Prince Perfection went out into the world to find the doll that came straight from Fairyland.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "WILL YOU COME AND PLAY WITH ME, LITTLE WISDOM?"]

THOSE WYMPS AGAIN

There was great consternation in Fairyland, for it was suddenly discovered that the sun had been s.h.i.+ning crookedly all the morning. It was consequently two hours later than anybody thought it was; and this, as it happened, was a very serious matter, for all the fairies had been invited to the christening of the little Prince Charming, and it would never do for them to arrive late. Of course, the wymps were at the bottom of it and the sun had no idea that he was not s.h.i.+ning quite in his usual way; but no one in Fairyland had time to trouble about that, and, without waiting even for the b.u.t.terflies to be harnessed, away flew all the fairies in a regular scurry. Now, even fairies are apt to do stupid things sometimes, especially when they are fl.u.s.tered and the wymps have been at work; so there may be some excuse for what they did on that particular morning. The fact is, they were so anxious to arrive in time to give their christening presents to the royal baby, that when they met a christening party coming along the road they never stopped to see whether it was the right christening party or not, but just flew down and presented their gifts to the baby, one after another, as fast as they could speak.

"I give you beauty," said one. "And I, thoughtfulness," said another.

"And I, wisdom," said a third. "And I, patience," said a fourth. "And I, contentment," said a fifth; and so on, until all the gifts of Fairyland had been given to the baby in the nurse's arms. Then, when they had quite finished speaking, the poor, flurried little fairies discovered that the baby was the daughter of a poor peasant and his wife, while Prince Charming lived in quite another country, a very long way off. It was a great calamity, no doubt, but nothing could be done, for the fairies had no more gifts left; so they returned very sadly to Fairyland, and hoped that the wymps would not find it out. Of course, the wymps did find it out, for they had arranged the whole thing from the very beginning. Still, the wymps are not nearly so bad as they pretend to be; and when they had finished laughing over their joke they did their best to make things right again by going in large numbers to Prince Charming's christening. They behaved very noisily when they got there; and they ate every bit of the christening cake and ended in giving the baby Prince the only nice gift the wymps have the power to give; and that is the nicest gift in the world, for it is called Laughter. To be sure, there had never been such a topsy-turvey christening party before; but all the guests enjoyed it thoroughly, and that cannot be said of all the parties to which the fairies are invited. The Fairy Queen could not help smiling when she heard what happened. "Never mind!" she said. "Some day, Prince Charming shall have all the gifts of Fairyland, too. Meanwhile, he has something far better than we should have given him."

The peasant's daughter grew up as beautiful and as wise as all the gifts of Fairyland could make her. Everything she did was as well done as the cleverest people in the world, all put together, could have done it; and everything she said was as wise as the contents of all the books in the King's library. When she cooked the Sunday dinner, she made it taste like a banquet of twenty courses; she had only to look at the flowers in the garden, and they bloomed as luxuriantly as though they had been brought straight from Fairyland. She helped all the village people when they were in a difficulty, for her advice was the very best that could be had; and they soon forgot that she was only a child, and they called her "Little Wisdom" instead of the ordinary name by which she had been christened. She loved to sit by herself in the cherry orchard, and she wondered how the other children could laugh and play when there was so much thinking to be done. She never laughed nor played herself, for the fairies had been so anxious to make her wise and beautiful, that they had not thought of giving her anything so ordinary as happiness. Every one envied her parents for having such a wonderful daughter; but for all that the peasant and his wife were not satisfied.

"It is a great pity," grumbled her father, "that all the gifts of Fairyland should have been wasted on a girl. If the child had been a boy, now, she would have made some stir in the world."

"For my part," sighed her mother, "I would gladly see her lose all the gifts of Fairyland if she would only laugh and cry like other children."

In the meantime the little Prince Charming was growing up without the help of a single gift from Fairyland. Never had the palace contained such an idle, careless little Prince; he laughed at everything that happened, morning, noon, and night; he played tricks on all his Professors instead of learning his lessons, and he could not keep grave long enough even to say the alphabet. He was so determined to look on the bright side of everything, that when people were angry with him he thought it was only their way of being amusing; and when they tried to punish him, he found it such a good joke that they very soon gave up the attempt. The people, one and all, loved the merry little Prince who laughed at life from his royal nursery and refused to grow any older; but the King viewed the matter in quite another light.

"What will become of the country," said his Majesty, "if the boy does not learn to be serious?"

"He is so happy," said the Queen, apologetically. "Is not that enough?"

The King evidently thought it was not nearly enough, for he despatched a page at once to fetch Prince Charming from the nursery. The Prince came whistling into the room, with his hands in his pockets, which was not a princely way of behaving, to begin with.

"You are eleven years old," began the King, solemnly.

"Everybody tells me that," said the Prince, smiling gaily. He supposed grown-up people could not help saying the same thing so often; at all events he did not mean to let it trouble him.

"It is time you learned to be serious," continued the King, still more solemnly.

"To be serious? What is that? Is it a new game?" asked Prince Charming, eagerly.

"Hus.h.!.+" whispered the Queen, anxiously. "It is what every one has to be,--the Prime Minister, and the Head Cook, and everybody."

"Surely," laughed the little Prince, "if so many people are occupied in being serious there is no need for me to bother about it!"

"You cannot even read," said the King, frowning.

"No; but my Professor can," said Prince Charming. "He can read the longest words in the dictionary without taking breath. When any one in the kingdom can read so beautifully as that, it would surely be impolite to try to imitate him!"

"The poorest children in the kingdom know far more than you do," said the King, who was rapidly losing patience.

"Then there are plenty of people to tell me everything I want to know,"

smiled the Prince. "What is the use of knowing just as much as everybody else? There would be nothing left to talk about."

The King looked at the Queen in despair.

"It is not the boy's fault," said the Queen soothingly; "you see, the fairies did not come to his christening."