The angry voice of the chief cook sounded louder than before, and she pulled away her hand and escaped down the path.

"Will you come to the ball?" the King shouted after her.

"Perhaps!" laughed the little scullery-maid over her shoulder, and the next moment she was out of sight. It was truly a strange way of accepting an invitation to the King's ball; but then, she was the hundredth Princess, and perhaps that made all the difference.

It was a most magnificent ball; and the hundredth Princess _did_ come to it. For, just as the King finished dancing with the last of the ninety-nine princesses, a great hubbub was heard in the hall outside; and into the room ran the little scullery-maid, and after her ran the chief cook with the soup-ladle in his hand, and after them both came the Prime Minister, and the chief huntsman, and the Lord High Executioner, and all the other people who were in the hall because they did not know how to dance.

"Who are you?" cried the ninety-nine princesses, as the little scullery-maid stood in front of them all, in her crumpled print gown, with her green handkerchief tied over her head.

"Who are you?" echoed all the courtiers and all the pages who happened to be there.

"She is nothing but a scullery-maid," cried the chief cook, brandishing his soup-ladle.

"She is the Green Enchantress," gasped the chief huntsman.

"You are all talking rubbish," said the Prime Minister, who had certainly lost some of his manners since he took to speaking the truth.

"Any one can see she is the hundredth Princess!"

But it was the King who really settled the matter.

"She is the Queen, of course," he said gently, and came and took her by the hand. And no one thought of contradicting him, for, although real princesses have to make themselves, it is quite certain that any king can make a queen.

When the ninety-nine princesses saw how charming the little Queen was, they crowded round her with one accord and gave her ninety-nine kisses.

So they were real princesses, after all! "Tell us," they begged her afterwards, "are you really the Green Enchantress?"

"Oh no," she said; "I gave up being an enchantress when I found I could not bewitch the King."

"Why did you want to bewitch me, dearest?" asked the King, in amazement.

"Because you were so fond of killing things," she said.

"Then I will never kill anything again as long as I live!" vowed the King.

And that is the end of the story, for when the little rabbits heard that the King had given up hunting, they all gave a great gulp and swallowed their hearts. And after that, there was no one in the kingdom who was not happy, for everybody's heart was in the right place.

Somebody Else's Prince

[Ill.u.s.tration]

In a country that is so far away that only wymps and fairies ever live long enough to get there, an exceptional King and Queen once ruled over their five children, a devoted nation, and each other. Now, the five children had five gardens all in a row; and four of these belonged to the King's four sons, and were just as beautiful as gardens cannot help being, which is surely beautiful enough for ordinary folk. The Princess Gentianella, however, was anything but an ordinary princess; and her garden, the one that came at the end of the row, was far more beautiful than any one could possibly describe. This was hardly to be wondered at, for, while the four Princes had to work very hard in their gardens before anything would grow in them, the fairies just came and breathed on the Princess's garden, and everything that was bright to see and sweet to smell grew up in it. Even the wymps did not play any tricks with the Princess's garden; for they had given her their warm little wympish hearts the moment she was born; so they allowed the sun to shine on her charming flower-beds as much as it pleased--and, of course, it pleased the sun to shine there very often indeed.

Now, the Princess's garden was surrounded by a wall. When she was quite a little girl, the King and Queen had ordered the wall to be built, just high enough to keep her from looking over it; and every time that the Princess grew a little more, another row of bricks was added to the wall, so that, by the time she had stopped growing altogether, the wall was ever so much higher than she was. She was such a dainty little Princess, though, that even then it was not a very high wall. Still, it was high enough to prevent her from seeing what was on the other side; and this annoyed her so much that all the pretty flowers the fairies could give her did not make up for the things she was not tall enough to see. The King and Queen had no idea of this; they loved their little daughter extremely, and they only thought how clever and how wise they were to keep her from looking into the world that lay outside her garden. "She might see something to frighten her, if she could see over the wall," they said.

The four Princes had no walls round their gardens, and what was more, they could see over the wall of their sister's garden, too; but they never thought of telling her what they saw.

"Boys always have all the fun," sighed the little Princess. "I wish I were a boy!"

Then, one by one, the three elder Princes rode away into the world and left their gardens to run to seed; and at last the time came for the King's youngest son to go too.

"It will be dreadfully dull when you have gone away," said the Princess, who was sitting on the gra.s.s-plot in her garden when Prince Hyacinth came to say good-bye to her.

"Oh no," answered her brother, with a smile; "you can still play in your pretty garden."

The Princess pouted. "_You_ would not like to play by yourself for ever and ever and ever," she remarked.

The Prince was sure he would not have liked it at all, but then, he was not a little girl. "It must be rather dull," he confessed; "but perhaps, if you wait long enough, some other prince will come into your garden, and then you can ask him to play with you."

The Princess shook her head. "He will never be able to get in," she sighed. "Only look at that stupid high wall!"

Prince Hyacinth laughed outright, as princes sometimes do when their sisters are only little girls. "I expect he'll be able to get in, if he is anything of a prince," he observed. Then he kissed her on both cheeks, and rode away like the others.

That was how the Princess Gentianella was left alone in the most beautiful garden on this side of the sun. And if it had not been for the wymps, she might never have known to the end of her days what the world was like on the other side of her wall. Fortunately for every one, however, the wymps are never far off when a charming little princess is in trouble; and on the very day that the King's youngest son rode away into the world, one of the nicest and the naughtiest and the wympiest wymps of all came head first through the sun, and was sitting on the top of the Princess's wall with his legs dangling, before she had time to say "Oh!"

"Come now," said the wymp, "let's hear all about it." His tone was so exceedingly friendly, and he seemed so unlikely to give her good advice, which was all that a fairy would have done, that the Princess Gentianella dried her eyes and told him everything. When she had finished, the wymp stood on his head to concentrate his thoughts, and reflected deeply.

"Will _you_ tell me what is on the other side of my wall?" asked the Princess Gentianella, as the wymp remained in this remarkable position without speaking. She did not know that it never makes much difference to a wymp whether he is on his head or his heels, so she was naturally afraid that he would make his head ache if he stood on it any longer.

However, the wymp came through the air in somersaults, when he heard the Princess's question, and he landed in the middle of a bed of scarlet poppies and twinkled at her.

"You won't like it, if I do," he remarked.

"I am quite positive I shall," declared the Princess; "and you are such a particularly nice kind of wymp that you surely cannot refuse to tell me!"

No wymp of the right sort could have resisted an appeal like that; and as every wymp is the right sort of wymp, this particular wymp at once did as the Princess asked him.

"All right," he said. "There isn't much to tell, though. There are the usual rows of mountains, and the usual rivers and lakes and islands and peninsulas and--"

"Don't!" cried the Princess, stopping up her ears with her little pink finger-tips.

"--and isthmuses," continued the wymp, cheerfully; "and volcanoes, and hot springs and cold springs, and palm-trees and apple-trees and boot-trees--"

"I don't believe," interrupted the Princess, indignantly, "that there is nothing but a stupid geography book on the other side of my wall!"

The wymp looked at her and twinkled more than ever; but when he saw that her eyes were shining, just as her own flowers might have done at the time of the dew-fall, he stopped teasing her at once. No one knows better than a wymp when it is time to stop teasing.

"Hullo!" he said. "What is the matter now?"

"I thought I should see something quite different," said the Princess, plaintively.

"So you would, my little dear," cried the wymp. "I was only telling you what _I_ saw. Give me those two ridiculous little hands of yours, and you shall see everything that I didn't."

This time the Princess Gentianella did say "Oh!" and she said it because she found herself sitting on the top of her wall, with all the world on the other side of it lying stretched out before her, for miles and miles and miles. She did not see very much at first, though, for she looked no further than the little corner of it that lay just under her eyes.

"Why," said the Princess, softly, "there is a garden on the other side of my wall. And only look, there is a real Prince in the middle of it!"

She turned round to tell her wymp all about it, but the wymp had other work to do and was already on his way to the back of the sun. So there was nothing for it but to look over the wall again, and this time the Prince glanced up and saw her.