But Princess Prunella showed no signs of being in a hurry. She just glanced over the sea of faces that were turned towards her, and then looked speechlessly at her mother. The smiles had all gone from her face, and the big blue eyes were filled with tears.

"Why, they are all exactly alike!" she said piteously. "I cannot tell one from another." And to the astonishment of every one in the room, she dropped down on the steps of the throne and began to cry.

"Dear, dear! What is to be done?" exclaimed the Queen, in much alarm.

"It will look so very bad if all the children have to be sent home again!"

"It will certainly lead to a war," was all the King said; and then they both looked helplessly at their sobbing little daughter. As for all the children, they were so surprised at hearing how much alike they were that they said nothing at all; and it is difficult to tell what would have been the end of the matter, if the Princess had not suddenly jumped to her feet again and pointed towards the door.

"There is the Prince I should like to play with," she exclaimed. "_He_ is not like the others, for he has a wonderful look on his face."

Everybody looked round at the doorway; and, sure enough, there stood a boy whom no one had noticed before. "Come here, Prince," commanded the Princess, raising her voice haughtily; "you may kiss my hand if you like."

But the boy drew back with a bewildered air and shook his head. Princess Prunella stamped her foot angrily.

"How dare you hesitate when I tell you to come here?" she cried. At this, however, the strange boy turned and hastened out of the room altogether; and a loud murmur of astonishment rose from the children.

The King's daughter had never been disobeyed in her life before, and for a moment she was too astonished to speak.

"Who is he? What is his name?" she demanded at last.

There was a pause, broken presently by the shrill voice of one of the pages. "Please, your Highness, it is only deaf Robert, the minstrel's son," he said.

"Deaf!" repeated the Princess. "What is that?"

"It means that he cannot hear anything, little daughter," explained the Queen; "so, you see, he would not do for a playfellow at all. Besides, he is not even a Prince. Can you not choose one of these others instead?"

The Princess, however, could do nothing of the kind. "All these are alike," she said again; "but the minstrel's son has a wonderful look on his face, and I will have no one else for a playfellow!"

So all the children went sadly back to their homes, and wondered why they were so much alike; and the whole court was made uncomfortable once more by the sulkiness of Princess Prunella.

"Your Highness's best wax doll has not been out for two whole days,"

suggested the head nurse.

The Princess s.n.a.t.c.hed the doll from her hands and threw it on the floor.

"If you will not let me play with a boy who is deaf, how can you expect me to play with a _doll_?" she asked; and although, no doubt, there was much in what she said, it was hardly the way in which to speak to the head nurse. Indeed, there would have been a serious disturbance in the royal nursery the very next minute, if the Princess's cream-coloured pony had not suddenly trotted round from the stable of its own accord, and put it into her head to go for a ride.

Now, the Princess's pony was of course a fairy pony; so when he ran away with her in the forest, that day, it was not to be supposed that he would run away with her for nothing. He took her, in fact, for a real fairy ride, all through a fairy forest, that began by being quite a baby forest and then grew and grew, the deeper she went into it, until it ended in being quite a grown-up forest. And the pony never stopped running away until he reached a dear little grey house, that was set in the brightest of flower gardens, right in the middle of the forest.

The Princess slipped off his back and pushed open the little gate and walked into the flower garden. Any one else might have been surprised to find deaf Robert sitting there, in the middle of the trim green lawn, but after a fairy ride one is never surprised at anything; so the Princess's heart just gave one big jump for joy, and she ran straight up to him and took his hand.

"Poor deaf boy! poor deaf boy!" she said softly. Certainly she was not behaving like a King's daughter, for she ought to have been extremely angry with him for disobeying her in the morning, instead of which she spoke as gently to him as any ordinary little girl might have done. But then, as he could not hear what she said to him, what was the use of speaking like a princess?

"Poor deaf boy!" she repeated, bending over him; "no wonder you look so dull and unhappy!"

It was the first time in her life that she had forgotten she was a princess, and she was quite surprised at the gentleness of her own voice. She was still more surprised when the deaf boy rose to his feet and bowed very low and answered her.

"I was only unhappy, Princess, because I could not hear what you said to me this morning," he explained.

"Oh!" cried the Princess. "You _can_ hear me now!"

"Ah, yes," said deaf Robert; "I can hear you now, because you speak so kindly. It is only when people are angry and speak roughly that I cannot hear them. That is why they say I am deaf."

"Have you always been deaf?" asked the Princess, wonderingly.

"Ever since the wymps came to my christening," answered the minstrel's son. "For when they asked my father what gift he would choose for me, he chose that I should be deaf to every sound that was not beautiful."

"So that is why you have such a wonderful look on your face," said Princess Prunella. "I wish the wymps went to everybody's christening!"

Deaf Robert shook his head. "If they had not come to mine," he remarked, "I should have been able to hear what you said to me this morning."

"Never mind!" said the Princess. "Come back to the palace with me now; I will never speak crossly to you again, and then you will always be able to hear what I say."

"No, no," answered Robert, shrinking back. "I cannot come to the town; it is so silent there, it frightens me."

"Silent?" echoed the Princess. "Surely, it is the forest that is silent!"

"Oh, no," said the minstrel's son, smiling; "the forest is full of sound. Can you not hear them all talking,--the bees and the flowers and the great pine-trees?"

Princess Prunella listened. "No," she said, shaking her head, "I can hear nothing." Then she took the deaf boy's hands and pulled him towards the gate. "Come back to the town with me," she said eagerly. "It is true that you cannot hear the other people's voices; but you will always be able to hear _me_, and that is ever so much more important!"

So the minstrel's son went back to the palace with Princess Prunella; and when the King and Queen saw how happy their little daughter was at last, they said nothing more about deaf Robert not being a prince, but got over the difficulty by making him a Marquis on the spot and giving him the appointment of Playfellow-in-chief to her Royal Highness. A magnificent banquet was given to celebrate this important event, at which several speeches were made by the King and several tunes were played by the band; but as the speeches were exceedingly pompous and the tunes were exceedingly noisy, the new Marquis, for whom they were intended, heard neither one nor the other. However, he heard every word that the little Princess whispered in his ear, and perhaps that was all that he wished to hear.

Never had life pa.s.sed so peacefully at the palace as in the days that followed. The Princess was never heard to utter an angry word, and she went about with a contented look on her face that cheered the hearts of all who knew her. It was indeed a happy day for the court when the minstrel's son came to play with the King's daughter, and every one rejoiced that the King and the Queen had been wise enough to let their little daughter have her own way. But all this while no one thought of the minstrel's son.

Now, anybody might suppose that a minstrel's son, who suddenly found himself made into a Marquis and Playfellow-in-chief to a Princess, would be the happiest boy in the world. And yet, although he grew fonder every day of his little playfellow, deaf Robert was the saddest person in the whole court. He grew more and more silent as the days went on, until at last even the Princess noticed that he was changed.

"The wonderful look has gone from your face," she said to him. "Can it be that you do not feel happy at court?"

Then the boy-Marquis told her the truth. "I am unhappy because I cannot hear the sounds of the town," he said. "Will not your father go and live in the forest for a change, so that we can play there together, instead of in this horrible, silent place?"

"But I don't want to go and play in the forest," objected the Princess.

"There are no people in the forest; and I should forget I was a person myself, if I had nothing to talk to but the flowers and the trees."

For the first time since they had played together, deaf Robert remembered that he was nearly two years older than the little Princess; and he smiled in a superior manner. "That is only because you hear all the wrong things," he said. "If you could once hear the sounds of the forest, you would never want to come back to the town."

The Princess turned red with anger, and she opened her mouth to give the minstrel's son a thorough good scolding, which would certainly have surprised him had he been able to hear it. But she remembered in time that he would not be able to hear it, so she sighed impatiently and answered him as softly as she could.

"You are quite mistaken," she said, putting her chin in the air. "If you were a real boy you would understand." And with that she turned and left him. It was certainly annoying not to be able to lose her temper whenever she felt inclined, but there was nothing to prevent her from remembering that she was a princess.

That afternoon, the Princess p.r.i.c.ked her finger, and the minstrel's son found out that what she had said was quite true, and he was not a real boy at all. For, of course, the Princess did what any other little girl of twelve years old would have done, and burst into tears; while the minstrel's son, who was quite unable to hear her sobs, only stared at her solemnly, and wondered why her pretty round face had suddenly twisted itself into such a strange expression.

"What are you doing, Prunella?" he asked her gravely.

"Doing!" wept the Princess. "Why, I am crying, of course! That is what you would be doing if you had p.r.i.c.ked your finger as badly as I have."

She held out her small white finger as she spoke, but the minstrel's son only stared at her as solemnly as before.

"Crying? What is that?" he asked. "And why should you do anything so useless? Surely, it would be better to fetch a doctor or a piece of sticking-plaster."