"Everything goes wrong here. I wish I were back in my own palace once more! I would never sigh again to leave it."

"Neither would I," agreed King Crosspatch, drying his tears suddenly.

"Let's go back!"

They made up their minds in an instant, and slamming the door of the snug little cottage, they began to climb the steep hill to their splendid palace. Every step of the way they were in a perfect torment of fear lest the old man and the old woman would refuse to change places again.

"That old woman will never want to give me my trailing velvet robes,"

said Queen Grumpy, as they sat to rest on the stone stile.

"And I have been thinking that the old man will fight to keep my diamond crown," said King Crosspatch anxiously. But at that very minute they heard voices, and behold! around the turn in the road came the old man and old woman, hurrying as though an army were after them. The old man was thumping his stick, and the old woman was making angry gestures with her hands; and both the old man and the old woman looked very cross and ill-humored.

"Ah, here you are!" exclaimed the old man, stopping short before the stone stile. "Now give me my hat and take back your hateful crown without any further nonsense! I could not sleep a wink last night, because it was so heavy on my head. Such a hateful palace too! I never saw the like! I could not smoke my briarwood pipe which I brought along for company, and this morning two villains were like to drown me in a pool before I was fully awake."

"They did not try to drown you," replied King Crosspatch haughtily.

"That pool was a bath. Here is your hat; give me my crown."

"You may call it a bath or not, just as you choose," declared the old man warmly, "but let those two villains drown you instead of me, is what I say! I was never so disappointed in all my life as I was with your palace. The royal throne was hard as stone; the royal beds were soft as dough; everything was wrong."

Meanwhile Queen Grumpy and the old woman were having a time of it.

"Your cow has no manners," complained Queen Grumpy. "She kicked me, and she spilled the milk. I should behead her if she were mine."

"Would you, indeed?" asked the old woman scornfully, "and drink water and eat bread without b.u.t.ter all the rest of your life, I suppose? Let me tell you, Your Royal Highness, that your servants are lazy and good-for-nothing! I saw dust on the tops of all the doors and windows, and the silver flagon was not polished as brightly as my old pewter pots. Your royal cooks make griddlecakes heavy as lead; you had best behead them instead of my good Bossy-Cow." Then she added, "Did you feed my bird and give him water?"

"I could hardly feed myself in that awkward cottage of yours!" retorted Queen Grumpy.

"Oh, my poor bird!" exclaimed the old woman. "Here, hurry and give me back my own dress that I may loop it above my red flannel petticoat and be comfortable once more. I suppose you took the bread out of the oven in time--did you?"

"I forgot it, and it burned," sulkily replied Queen Grumpy, b.u.t.toning herself into her trailing velvet robes.

"Oh, what stupid folk are kings and queens!" cried the old woman in a pa.s.sion. "Come along, husband," she called, and down the hill they went.

"And what stupid folk are cottagers!" called King Crosspatch after them.

"Come along, wife," said he, and up the hill they went.

And so these four old folk again went on their separate ways. All four were sure that they were walking on the road to happiness at last, and so all were very jolly and smiling in consequence.

"Oh, there's no place like home!

Oh, there's no place like home!"

sang the old man and his old wife, as they went trudging down to the little cottage so snug.

"Oh, there's no place like home!

Oh, there's no place like home!"

sang Queen Grumpy and King Crosspatch, as they went climbing to their splendid palace on the top of a high hill; and there we will bid them all adieu!

CHAPTER IX

THE GOOSE GIRL AND THE BLUE GANDER

Once upon a time there was a goose girl who tended her flock in a green meadow. The meadow was dotted with forget-me-nots and yellow b.u.t.tercups, and the sun shone down on it; her geese were fine blue geese and uncommonly knowing. She should have been the happiest goose girl in all the world, but she was not. She thought not of the beautiful meadow nor of her geese that were a pleasure to tend, for they were so wise and always did her bidding; but instead this goose girl wept every day because she longed to marry a certain lord who lived in a gray stone castle at the top of a high hill. All day long she sat looking at this castle, and her eyes could see nothing else for admiration of it. She dreamed dreams a hundred times a day, in which she married the lord, and was cross with her geese because she had to tend them.

Now when the lord of the castle went riding by the green meadow, this silly goose girl would run after the carriage, shouting his name and throwing bouquets of wild flowers to him. But alas! The carriage always whirled by so quickly that the lord heard her not, and the bouquets of wild flowers fell in the dust by the roadside. Each time the goose girl wept and threw sticks at her geese because she had been disappointed, until they fled to shelter.

"It is the stupid coachman's fault," said the goose girl to herself one day, after she had chased the carriage for a long distance. "My lord is within, of course, and cannot hear me, for the windows of gla.s.s shut out all sound." She knew that maidens often wrote letters when they were unable to obtain speech with those whom they fancied, and she resolved to write to the lord of the gray stone castle.

She spent her year's earnings on some pink paper with red hearts lovingly entwined on the border, and that her letter might be colorful and splendid, she bought also some purple ink. Then the goose girl sat before a flat rock and strove to compose such a letter to the lord that he would stop his carriage the next time he rode by the meadow.

"The first day he will ask me to ride with him, and the second day he will ask me to wed him," thought the goose girl, as she sat gazing at the gray stone castle. "The third day I shall ride with him a bride to yonder castle, where I shall dwell forevermore and have naught to do with geese but to eat them roasted!"

Her geese, thinking perhaps she had spread on the rock something fine to eat, crowded about her, but she drove them off. They bothered her, and she wished to give her mind to the letter. One large blue gander remained near, in spite of her angry motions and cross words. The goose girl was about to begin her letter when she remembered that she had brought no pen.

"Ah me! What shall I do?" she cried. "I shall have no more earnings for another year, and by that time my lord may be wed to some fair maiden, and I will surely die of a broken heart!" She covered her face and wept aloud at her misfortune. Suddenly she began to laugh instead.

"Oh, that I should be so foolish!" she exclaimed. "Here waiting my hand I have a hundred pens." She seized the large blue gander and plucked a fine quill from under his wing, but no sooner had she done so than the bird began to speak.

"That is not right," declared the gander. "You have taken what belongs not to you but to me. Put back my quill, or I shall be vexed."

"And who is there to care?" replied the goose girl rudely. "When I have written a letter to my lord of the gray stone castle, you shall have your quill and not before."

She began to speak her thoughts aloud, as goose girls often do, and started once more to compose the letter. "To my dearest lord of the gray stone castle, whom I love with all my heart, but who whirls past me as I sit tending geese in the meadow," she planned to write, and dipped the quill in the purple ink. To her dismay the pen wrote not at all as she planned, but seemed possessed of a spirit to go of itself. It wrote with a remarkable flourish:

"Dear gander!"

But the goose girl pulled it from the paper before it could write more.

"What manner of pen is this?" she cried in vexation.

"It is not your quill," said the blue gander. "I am its master, and it will write letters to none but me."

"Well, upon my word!" declared the goose girl. "You are the most forward creature I have yet seen, and this is what you will get." She took a long branch and beat the gander until he hid from sight in the bushes.

Then again she strove to write her letter, but again the pen was possessed of a spirit of mischief.

"Oh! Oh!" wept the goose girl, "I have spent all my earnings on splendid pink paper with red hearts lovingly entwined on the border, and purple ink I bought also that my letter might be fine as a valentine. But, alas! I am bothered with a stubborn quill that will not write as I think. If I write not my letter to my lord, he will never know of me.

Then he will never marry me, and I shall dwell forever in my wretched hut instead of the gray stone castle, as I have desired."

"You weep because you cannot marry the lord who lives in yonder gray stone castle," said the blue gander, poking his long neck from the bushes where he had fled. "Let me give you some advice. A wretched hut is not a pleasant place, 'tis true, but your manners suit it better than the castle of your dreams."

"Hold your tongue, forward bird!" screamed the goose girl in anger. She seized a clod of earth and hurled it with such force that had it struck the gander, he would have fallen flat in his tracks; but luck was with him, and he dodged.

The next day and the next day after that the goose girl sat down to write before the flat rock in the meadow; but the quill was stubborn as ever. She spoiled all but one sheet of the precious pink paper. Then once more the blue gander spoke to the goose girl.

"You have spoiled many sheets of your precious pink paper," said the gander, nodding his head and c.o.c.king his eye in the wisest sort of way.

"Why will you not let the quill write a letter to me,--if only to see what will happen?"