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 Chapter 6 Repetition

Section 6.1 Do Loops

1. What is wrong with the following Do loop?

Dim index As Integer = 1
Do While index <> 9
lstBox.Items.Add("Hello")
index += 1
Loop
(A) The test variable should not be changed inside a Do loop.
(B) The test condition will never be true.
(C) This is an infinite loop.
(D) Nothing
D

2. What numbers will be displayed in the list box when the button is clicked?
Private Sub btnDisplay_Click(...) Handles btnDisplay.Click
Dim num as Double = 10
Do While num > 1
lstBox.Items.Add(num)
num = num - 3
Loop
End Sub

(A) 10, 7, and 4

(B) 10, 7, 4, and 1
(C) 10, 7, 4, 1, and -2
(D) No output
A

3. Which While statement is equivalent to Until num < 100?

(A) While num <= 100
(B) While num > 100
(C) While num >= 100
(D) There is no equivalent While statement.
C
4. What is wrong with the following Do loop?
Dim index As Integer = 1
Do While index <> 10
lstBox.Items.Add("Hello")
index += 2
Loop
(A) It should have been written as a Do Until loop.
(B) It is an infinite loop.
(C) The test variable should not be changed within the loop itself.
(D) Nothing
B

5. In analyzing the solution to a program, you conclude that you want to construct a loop so
that the loop terminates either when (a < 12) or when (b = 16). Using a Do loop, the test
condition should be
(A) Do While (a > 12) Or (b <> 16)
(B) Do While (a >= 12) Or (b <> 16)
(C) Do While (a < 12) Or (b <> 16)
(D) Do While (a >= 12) And (b <> 16)
(E) Do While (a < 12) And (b = 16)
D

6. When Visual Basic executes a Do While loop it first checks the truth value of the
_________.
(A) pass
(B) loop
(C) condition
(D) statement
C

7. If the loop is to be executed at least once, the condition should be checked at the
__________.
(A) top of the loop
(B) middle of the loop
(C) bottom of the loop
(D) Nothing should be checked.
C

8. A Do While loop checks the While condition before executing the statements in the loop.
(T/F)
T

9. If the While condition in a Do While loop is false the first time it is encountered, the
statements in the loop are still executed once. (T/F)
F
10. The following statement is valid. (T/F)
Do While x <> 0
T

11. The following two sets of code produce the same output. (T/F)
Dim num As Integer = 1 Dim num As Integer = 1
Do While num <=5 Do
lstBox.Items.Add("Hello") lstBox.Items.Add("Hello")
num += 1 num += 1
Loop Loop Until (num > 5)
T

12. A loop written using the structure Do While...Loop can usually be rewritten using the
structure Do...Loop Until. (T/F)
T

13. A variable declared inside a Do loop cannot be referred to outside of the loop. (T/F)
T

14. Assume that i and last are Integer variables. Describe precisely the output produced by the
following segment for the inputs 4 and –2.
Dim last, i As Integer
last = CInt(InputBox("Enter terminating value:"))
i = 0
Do While (i <= last)
lstBox.Items.Add(i)
i += 1
Loop
(Input 4): 0 1 2 3 4
(Input –2): No output

15. The following is an infinite loop. Rearrange the statements so that the loop will terminate as
intended.
x = 0
Do
lstBox.Items.Add(x)
Loop Until x > 13
x += 2
Move the last statement one line up, before the Loop Until statement
16. What is wrong with the following simple password program where today's password is
"intrepid"?
Private Sub btnDisplay_Click(...) Handles btnDisplay.Click
Dim password As String
password = InputBox("Enter today's password:")
Do
lstBox.Items.Add("Incorrect")
password = InputBox("Enter today's password:")
Loop Until password = "intrepid"
lstBox.Items.Add("Password Correct. You may continue.")
End Sub
(A) There is no way to re-enter a failed password.
(B) The Loop Until condition should be passWord <> "intrepid".
(C) It will display "Incorrect." even if the first response is "intrepid".
(D) Nothing
C

17. How many times will HI be displayed when the following lines are executed?
Dim c As Integer = 12
Do
lstBox.Items.Add("HI")
c += 3
Loop Until (c >= 30)
(A) 5
(B) 9
(C) 6
(D) 4
(E) 10
C

18. In the following code segment, what type of variable is counter?

Dim temp, counter, check As Integer
Do
temp = CInt(InputBox("Enter a number."))
counter += temp
If counter = 10 Then
check = 0
End If
Loop Until (check = 0)
(A) counter
(B) accumulator
(C) sentinel
(D) loop control variable
B
19. What numbers will be displayed in the list box by the following code when the button is
clicked?
Private Sub btnDisplay_Click(...) Handles btnDisplay.Click
Dim num As Integer = 7
Do
num += 1
lstBox.Items.Add(num)
Loop Until (num > 6)
lstBox.Items.Add(num)
End Sub
(A) 7
(B) 8
(C) 7 and 8
(D) 8 and 8
D

20. __________ calculate the number of elements in lists.

(A) Sentinels
(B) Counter variables
(C) Accumulators
(D) Nested loops
B

21. _________ calculate the sums of numerical values in lists.

(A) Sentinels
(B) Counter variables
(C) Accumulator variables
(D) Nested loops
C

22. The following are equivalent While and Until statements. (T/F)
While (num > 2) And (num < 5)
Until (num <= 2) Or (num >= 5)
T

23. A Do…Loop Until block is always executed at least once. (T/F)

T

24. A counter variable is normally incremented or decremented by 1. (T/F)

T
25. The following program uses a counter variable to force the loop to end. (T/F)
Private Sub btnDisplay_Click(...) Handles btnDisplay.Click
Dim r As Double = 1
Dim t As Double = 0
Do While (t < 5000)
t = 2 * t + r
r += 1
lstBox.Items.Add(t)
Loop
End Sub
F

Section 6.2 For…Next Loops

1. When the number of repetitions needed for a set of instructions is known before they are
executed in a program, the best repetition structure to use is a(n)
(A) Do While...Loop structure.
(B) Do...Loop Until structure.
(C) For...Next loop.
(D) If blocks.
C

2. What is one drawback in using non-integer Step sizes?

(A) Round-off errors may cause unpredictable results.
(B) Decimal Step sizes are invalid in Visual Basic.
(C) A decimal Step size is never needed.
(D) Decimal Step sizes usually produce infinite loops.
A

3. When the odd numbers are added successively, any finite sum will be a perfect square (e.g.,
1 + 3 + 5 = 9 and 9 = 3^2). What change must be made in the following program to correctly
demonstrate this fact for the first few odd numbers?
Private Sub btnDisplay_Click(...) Handles btnDisplay.Click
Dim oddNumber As Integer
Dim sum As Integer = 0
For i As Integer = 1 To 9 Step 2 'Generate first few odd numbers
oddNumber = i
For j As Integer = 1 To oddNumber Step 2 'Add odd numbers
sum += j
Next
lstBox.Items.Add(sum & " is a perfect square.")
Next
End Sub
(A) Change the Step size to 1 in the first For statement.
(B) Move oddNumber = i inside the second For loop.
(C) Reset sum to zero immediately before the second Next statement.
(D) Reset sum to zero immediately before the first Next statement.
C
4. What does the following program do with a person's name?
Private Sub btnDisplay_Click(...) Handles btnDisplay.Click
Dim name, test As String
Dim n As String = ""
name = InputBox("Enter your first name:")
For i As Integer = 0 To (name.Length - 1) Step 2
test = name.Substring(i, 1)
n = test & n
Next
txtBox.Text = n
End Sub
It displays the name
(A) in reverse order.
(B) in reverse order and skips every other letter.
(C) as it was entered.
(D) as it was entered, but skips every other letter.
B

5. Suppose the days of the year are numbered from 1 to 365 and January 1 falls on a Tuesday
as it did in 2013. What is the correct For statement to use if you want only the numbers for
the Fridays in 2013?
(A) For i As Integer = 3 to 365 Step 7
(B) For i As Integer = 1 to 365 Step 3
(C) For i As Integer = 365 To 1 Step -7
(D) For i As Integer = 3 To 365 Step 6
A

6. Given the following partial program, how many times will the statement
lstBox.Items.Add(j + k + m) be executed?
For j As Integer = 1 To 4
For k As Integer = 1 To 3
For m As Integer = 2 To 10 Step 3
lstBox.Items.Add(j + k + m)
Next
Next
Next
(A) 24
(B) 60
(C) 36
(D) 10
(E) None of the above
C
7. Which of the following program segments will sum the eight numbers input by the user?

(A)For k As Integer = 1 To 8
s = CDbl(InputBox("Enter a number.")
s += k
Next
(B) For k As Integer = 1 To 8
a = CDbl(InputBox("Enter a number.")
s += 1
Next
(C) For k As Integer = 1 To 8
a = CDbl(InputBox("Enter a number.")
a += s
Next
(D) For k As Integer = 1 To 8
a = CDbl(InputBox("Enter a number.")
s += a
Next
D

8. What will be displayed by the following program when the button is clicked?
Private Sub btnDisplay_Click(...) Handles btnDisplay.Click
Dim a As String, n, c As Integer
a = "HIGHBACK"
n = CInt(Int(a.Length / 2))
c = 0
For k As Integer = 0 To n – 1
If a.Substring(k, 1) > a.Substring(7 – k, 1) Then
c += 1
End If
Next
txtBox.Text = CStr(c)
End Sub

(A) 1
(B) 2
(C) 3
(D) 4
(E) 5
C

9. In a For statement of the form shown below, what is the default step value when the "Step c"
clause is omitted?
For i As Integer = a To b Step c
(A) the same as a
(B) the same as b
(C) 0
(D) 1
D
10. What will be displayed when the following lines are executed?
txtBox.Clear()
For k As Integer = 1 To 3
txtBox.Text &= "ABCD".Substring(4 – k, 1)
Next

(A) ABC
(B) CBA
(C) DBA
(D) DCBA
(E) DCB
E

11. Which loop computes the sum of 1/2 + 2/3 + 3/4 + 4/5 + … + 99/100?
(A) For n As Integer = 1 To 99
s += n / (1 + n)
Next
(B) For q As Integer = 100 To 1
s += (q + 1) /q
Next
(C) For d As Integer = 2 To 99
s = 1 / d + d / (d + 1)
Next
(D) For x As Integer = 1 To 100
s += 1 / (x + 1)
Next
A

12. How many times will PETE be displayed when the following lines are executed?
For c As Integer = 15 to -4 Step -6
lstBox.Items.Add("PETE")
Next
(A) 1
(B) 2
(C) 3
(D) 4
D
13. What will be displayed by the following program when the button is clicked?
Private Sub btnDisplay_Click(...) Handles btnDisplay.Click
Dim s As Double
s = 0
For k As Integer = 1 To 5
If k / 2 = Int(k / 2) Then
s += k
End If
Next
txtBox.Text = CStr(s)
End Sub

(A) 12
(B) 9
(C) 15
(D) 6
D

14. How many lines of output are produced by the following program segment?
For i As Integer = 1 To 3
For j As Integer = 1 To 3
For k As Integer = i to j
lstBox.Items.Add("Programming is fun.")
Next
Next
Next
(A) 8
(B) 9
(C) 10
(D) 11
C

15. Assuming the following statement, what is the For...Next loop's counter variable?
For yr As Integer = 1 To 5
(A) 1
(B) 5
(C) To
(D) yr
D
16. What is the value of j after the end of the following code segment?
For j As Integer = 1 to 23
lstBox.Items.Add("The counter value is " & j)
Next

(A) 22
(B) 23
(C) 24
(D) j no longer exists
D

17. A For...Next loop with a positive step value continues to execute until what condition is
met?
(A) The counter variable is greater than the terminating value.
(B) The counter variable is equal to or greater than the terminating value.
(C) The counter variable is less than the terminating value.
(D) The counter variable is less than or equal to the terminating value.
A

18. Which of the following loops will always be executed at least once when it is encountered?
(A) a For...Next loop
(B) a Do loop having posttest form
(C) a Do loop having pretest form
(D) none of the above.
B

19. Which of the following are valid for an initial or terminating value of a Fir...Next loop?
(A) a numeric literal
(B) info.Length, where info is a string variable
(C) a numeric expression
(D) All of the above
D

20. What is the data type of the variable num if Option Infer is set to On and the statement
Dim num = 7.0 is executed?
(A) Integer
(B) Boolean
(C) Double
(D) String
C

21. The value of the counter variable should not be altered within the body of a For…Next loop.
(T/F)
T
22. The body of a For...Next loop in Visual Basic will always be executed once no matter what
the initial and terminating values are. (T/F)
F

23. If the terminating value of a For...Next loop is less than the initial value, then the body of the
loop is never executed. (T/F)
F

24. If one For...Next loop begins inside another For...Next loop, it must also end within this
loop. (T/F)
T

25. The value of the counter variable in a For...Next loop need not be a whole number. (T/F)
T

26. One must always have a Next statement paired with a For statement. (T/F)
T

27. If the initial value is greater than the terminating value in a For...Next loop, the statements
within are still executed one time. (T/F)
F

28. When one For...Next loop is contained within another, the name of the counter variable for
each For...Next loop may be the same. (T/F)
F

29. A For...Next loop cannot be nested inside a Do loop. (T/F)

F

30. The following code segment is valid. (T/F)

If (firstLetter > "A") Then
For x As Integer = 1 to 100
lstBox.Items.Add(x)
Next
End If
T

31. In a For...Next loop, the initial value should be greater than the terminating value if a
negative step is used and the body of the loop is to be executed at least once. (T/F)
T

32. If the counter variable of a For...Next loop will assume values that are not whole numbers,
then the variable should not be of type Integer. (T/F)
T

33. The step value of a For...Next loop can be given by a numeric literal, variable, or expression.
(T/F)
T
34. The variable index declared with the statement For index As Integer = 0 To 5 cannot
be referred to outside of the For…Next loop. (T/F)
T

35. When Option Infer is set to On, a statement of the form Dim num = 7 is valid. (T/F)
T

36. What is displayed in the text box when the button is clicked?
Private Sub btnDisplay_Click(...) Handles btnDisplay.Click
Dim word As String = "Alphabet"
Dim abbreviation As String = ""
For i As Integer = 0 To word.Length - 1
If word.Substring(i, 1).ToUpper <> "A" Then
abbreviation &= word.Substring(i, 1)
End If
Next
txtBox.Text = abbreviation
End Sub
lphbet

Section 6.3 List Boxes and Loops

1. Which of the following expressions refers to the contents of the last row of the list box?
(A) lstBox.Items(lstBox.Items.Count)
(B) lstBox.Items(lstBox.Items.Count - 1)
(C) lstBox.Items(Count)
(D) lstBox.Items.Count
B

2. Which of the following expressions refers to the contents of the first row of the list box?
(A) lstBox.Items(0)
(B) lstBox.Items(1)
(C) lstBox.Items.First
(D) lstBox.Items(First)
A

3. Each item in a list box is identified by an index number; the first item in the list is assigned
which of the following values as an index?
(A) a randomly assigned value
(B) 1.
(C) a value initially designated by the programmer
(D) 0
D
4. The following lines of code display all the items of lstBox. (T/F)
For n As Integer = 1 to lstBox.Items.Count
lstBox2.Items.Add(lstBox.Items(n))
Next
F

5. The number of items in ListBox1 is ListBox1.Items.Count. (T/F)

T

6. If no item in a list box is selected, the value of lstBox.SelectedIndex is 0. (T/F)

F

7. Which of the statements will unhighlight any highlighted item in lstBox?

(A) lstBox.SelectedItem = Nothing
(B) lstBox.SelectedItem = ""
(C) lstBox.SelectedIndex = 0
(D) lstBox.SelectedIndex = -1
D

8. A list box named lstBox has its Sorted property set to True and contains the three items Cat,
Dog, and Gnu in its Items collection. If the word Elephant is added to the Items collection at
run time, what will be its index value?
(A) 2
(B) 1
(C) 3
(D) 0
A

9. A list box named lstBox has its Sorted property set to False and contains the three items Cat,
Dog, and Gnu in its list. If the word Elephant is added to the list at run time, what will be its
index value?
(A) 2
(B) 1
(C) 3
(D) 0
C

10. If a program contains procedures for both the Click and DoubleClick events on a list box and the user
double-clicks on the list box, only the Click event will be raised. (T/F)
T

11. If a list box has its sorted property set to True and the list box contains all numbers, then the values in
the list box will always be in increasing numerical order. (T/F)
F
12. If a list box contains all numbers, then which of the following values can be calculated
without using a loop?
(A) average value of the numbers
(B) largest number
(C) smallest number
(D) number of numbers
D

13. Which of the following is not a main type of event that can be raised by user selections of
items in a list box?
(A) Click event
(B) SelectedIndexChanged event
(C) FillDown event
(D) DoubleClick event
C

14. The value of lstBox.Items(n) is the nth item in the list box. (T/F)
F

15. The sorted property can only be set to True at design time. (T/F)
F

16. The _____________ data type is most suited to a flag.

(A) Boolean
(B) Integer
(C) String
(D) Double
A

17. A variable that keeps track of whether a certain situation has occurred is called
(A) a counter.
(B) an accumulator.
(C) a switch.
(D) a flag.
D
Other documents randomly have
different content
Little King Wistful slipped through the palace gates and went out
into his kingdom to look for something new. He was only eight years
old, so he was not a very big King; but he had been King as long as
he could remember, and he had been looking for something new the
whole time. Now, his kingdom was entirely made of islands, and in
the days when the old King and Queen were alive these islands were
known as the Cheerful Isles. But King Wistful changed their name
soon after he came to the throne, and insisted on their being called
the Monotonous Isles. For, strange as it may sound, this little King of
eight years old thought his kingdom was the dullest and the ugliest
and the most wearisome place in the world, and nothing that his
nurses or his councillors could do ever succeeded in making him
laugh and play like other little boys.
"Only look at the stupid things!" muttered his Majesty impatiently, as
he stood and surveyed his kingdom from the top of a small, grassy
hillock. "Five round islands in a row; always five round islands in a
row! If only some of them were square, it would be something!"
At the bottom of the hill was a wood, one of those pale-green baby
woods, where the trees are young and slender and nothing grows
very plentifully except the bracken and the heather. And as the King
stood and felt sorry for himself at the top of the hill, out from the
wood at the bottom of the hill came the sound of a little girl's voice,
singing a quaint little song. And this was the song:—
"Sing-song! Don't be long!
Wistful, Wistful, come and play!
Sing-song! It's very wrong
To stay and stay and stay away!
The world is much too nice a place
To make you pull so long a face;
It's full of people being kind,
And full of flowers for you to find;
There's heaps of folks for you to tease
And all the naughtiness you please;
To sulk is surely waste of time
 When all those trees are yours to climb!
Ting-a-ring! Make haste, King!
I've something really nice to say;
Ting-a-ring! A proper King
Would not make me sing all day!"
King Wistful thrilled all over with excitement. Was something really
going to happen at last? He had hardly time to think, however,
before the little singer came out of the wood into the open. She
wore a clean white pinafore, and on her head was a large white
sunbonnet, and under the sunbonnet were two of the brightest
brown eyes the King had ever seen. He stepped down the hill
towards her, wondering how anything so pretty and so merry could
have come into his kingdom; and at the same instant the little girl
saw the King and came running up the hill towards him, so it was
not long before they stood together, hand in hand, half-way down
the hillside.
"Where did you come from and who are you and how long have you
been here?" asked the King, breathlessly.
"I am Eyebright, of course," answered the little girl, smiling; "and
I've been here always."
"Who taught you to sing that song about me?" demanded the King.
"The magician," answered Eyebright; "and he told me to sing it
every day until you came. But you have been a long time coming!"
"I'm very sorry," replied his Majesty, apologetically; "you see, the
magician did not tell me to come. In fact, I don't even know who the
magician is."
"Are you not the King, then?" asked Eyebright, opening her great
brown eyes as wide as they would go.
The little King felt it was hardly necessary to answer this; but he set
his heels together and took off his crown and made her the best
bow he had learned at his dancing-class, just to show beyond any
doubt that he was the King. Eyebright still looked a little doubtful.
"Then how is it that you do not know the magician?" she asked him.
"What is the use of being King, if you do not know everybody who
lives in your kingdom?"
"It isn't any use; I never said I wanted to be King, did I?" said his
Majesty, a little crossly. It was not pleasant to find that somebody
else, and only a little girl in a sunbonnet, knew more about his
kingdom than he did.
"What a very funny boy you are!" remarked Eyebright, without
noticing his crossness. "I always thought it must be so splendid to
be a King, and to have a banquet whenever you like, and never to
go out without a procession, and to wear a crown instead of a
sunbonnet, and—"
"That's all you know about it," interrupted the King, somewhat
impolitely. "There aren't any banquets; and when there are, you only
have stupid things with long names to eat, and you never know
whether to eat them with a fork or a spoon, and it's always wrong
whichever you do. And if you ask for jumbles or chocolate creams or
plum-cake, you're told you mustn't spoil your dinner. And all the
procession you ever get is a procession of nurses, who won't even
let you step in a puddle if you want to!"
"Dear me," said Eyebright, "you're no better off than a little boy in
an ordinary nursery!"
The little King drew himself up on tiptoe with great dignity. "Some of
your remarks are most foolish," he said. "You forget that I have a
kingdom of my own as well as a nursery. To be sure," he added
sadly, "it is not much to boast of, for it is a very stupid kingdom, and
nothing nice ever happens in it."
"What do you mean?" exclaimed Eyebright. "Your kingdom is the
nicest kingdom in the whole world!"
King Wistful had managed to keep his temper so far, but this was
more than he could bear. "Rubbish!" he cried, completely forgetting
his royal manners. "You come up the hill with me, and I'll show you
what a stupid kingdom it is."
So they raced up to the top of the hill and looked down at the five
round islands in a row. "There!" said King Wistful. "Did you ever see
anything so dull?"
The little girl shook her head. "I think it is all as pretty as it can be,"
she said. "Look how the sun glints on the cornfields, and see the
great red and blue patches of flowers—"
"But they're always the same flowers," complained his Majesty,
yawning.
"They're supposed to be the same flowers, but they never are,"
answered Eyebright. "If you were to pick them—"
"Kings never pick flowers," he replied haughtily.
"Perhaps that is why you know so little about them," retorted
Eyebright; and his Majesty began to feel he was not getting the best
of it.
"Anyhow," he continued hastily, "you must own that the sea never
changes."
"Oh!" said Eyebright; "that is because you have not learned the sea
properly. It has ever so many different faces, and ever so many
different voices, too."
The King turned and stared at her. "Are you a witch?" he asked
wonderingly.
"No!" laughed Eyebright, merrily. "If I were, I would make you see
things right instead of wrong." Then she suddenly scampered down
the hill again. "Come along, quick!" she cried. "We'll go and ask the
magician to disenchant you."
King Wistful had to run his hardest to catch her, for the little girl in
the sunbonnet certainly knew how to put one foot in front of the
other. But then, a sunbonnet is not so apt to tumble off a person's
head as a crown, and that makes all the difference in a running race.
"Where does the magician live?" he panted, when he came up with
her.
"In the middle island," she answered. "We'll find the boat and follow
the river down to the sea." She plunged into the wood as she spoke,
and threaded her way through the slender young trees, with his
Majesty close at her heels. Sometimes the bracken was as tall as she
was, but the boy behind could always see the sunbonnet bobbing up
and down just ahead of him, and he followed it until they came out
at the other side of the wood and found themselves on the banks of
a charming little river. A small round boat like a tub, lined with pink
rose-leaves, was waiting for them; and into this they both jumped.
"Oh, oh!" cried Eyebright, jumping up and down with delight. "The
fairies are out to-day! Look at them—the purple ones in the
loosestrife, and the pink and white ones in the comfrey, and—"
"You'll upset the boat if you don't sit still," interrupted the King, who
felt cross because he could not see the fairies. "Let me have the oars
and I'll take you down the stream."
"You need not do anything of the sort," said Eyebright; "for this is
the boat the magician gave me, and it always takes you wherever
you want to go."
So they just sat in the sunshine and floated lazily along, and they
dabbled their hands in the water and made their sleeves as wet as
they pleased, and they caught at the branches above as they passed
under them, and they leaned over the side and stretched after
everything that grew out of reach; and, in short, if they had not
been in a fairy boat, it is very certain that they would have tumbled
into the water several times before they reached their journey's end.
Presently, the river widened out into the big calm sea; and after
that, the boat quickened its speed and took them across to the
middle island in no time at all, for the fairies know well enough that
nobody wants to dawdle about in an open sea, where there are no
tadpoles to catch and no trees that sweep their branches down to
meet the water.
When the boat stopped, they found themselves on the edge of a
shore covered with sea-lilac and yellow poppies, and wonderful
shells that sang without being put to any one's ear; and just a little
way along the beach was the magician's cave. There was no doubt
about its being the right cave, for over the door of it was written in
square acid tablets: "This is the magician's cave." Besides, the whole
cave was dug out of a solid almond rock; and of course, any other
person's cave would have been made of plain rock without any
almonds in it.
"Come along," said Eyebright; and the two children walked up the
beach and knocked at the magician's door and went in.
Some people might think that a cave on the sea-shore would be full
of draughts and jellyfish and wet shrimps; but this particular cave
was just like the nicest room that ever belonged to a castle-in-the-
air. The wonder of it was, that whoever went into it found the very
things he had never had and always wanted, and none of the things
that he had always had and never wanted. So Eyebright immediately
found a beautiful story-book, with a coloured picture on every page,
and all the sad stories squeezed between the happy stories, so that
no one who read it could ever cry for long at a time; while the King
found the inside of a clock waiting to be picked to pieces, and an
open pocket-knife with a bit of firewood lying handy, and a full-
rigged schooner ready to be sailed. And they both saw the dear old
magician, sitting in his arm-chair and smiling at them.
He was dressed in a long cloak, that always began by being a green
cloak but changed every other minute to a different colour, according
to the mood the magician was in; and as he was always in a nice
mood, whether it was a sad or a merry one, his cloak always
managed to be a nice colour. On his head was a high pointed hat,
with crackers sticking out of it and a pattern worked all over it in
caramels and preserved cherries; and he wore furry foxgloves on his
hands to keep them warm, because he was not so young as he used
to be. He had been practising as a magician for over a thousand
years, but he did not look very old, for all that; he was what might
be called pleasantly old, for he had soft white hair and a curly white
beard and a pink complexion like a school-boy's. That is how a
magician grows old when he has always been a jolly magician.
Eyebright ran straight up to him and climbed on his knee and
hugged him. "I've brought the King to see you," she announced;
"and we want you to be a nice, kind, lovely magician and help him
to be disenchanted."
The magician stood up and shook hands with the King, just to make
him feel at home; and the boy did not feel shy another minute, and
quite forgot that he had never paid a visit before without a
procession of nurses to look after him.
"You are very good children to call on me at tea-time," said the
magician. "If there is one thing more than another that makes me
feel the ache in my bones, it is having tea by myself. Now, would
you like to have it on the floor, or shall I call up a table?"
The King, who had had his meals on a table all his life, voted for the
floor; but when Eyebright said it would be more fun to see what
would happen if they chose the table, he had to own that perhaps
she was right. What happened was very simple: the magician just
stamped on the floor, and a neat little table, covered with a nice
white cloth, walked in at the door like any person and took up its
position in the middle of the floor.
"Well!" exclaimed Eyebright; "I never knew tables could walk,
before!"
"What do you suppose they have four legs for?" asked the magician,
smiling.
"My nursery table does not walk," observed the little King.
"Ah," said the magician, wisely, "some tables do not know how to
put two and two together. Now for some chairs!"
He stamped on the floor again, and two little arm-chairs bustled into
the room as fast as their fat little legs would carry them. "You must
excuse their being in such a hurry," said the magician; "they have
been playing at musical chairs all their lives, you see. Now, while you
are laying the table, I will boil the kettle. Crockery in the left-hand
cupboard, and eatables in the right-hand cupboard!"
So the magician set to work and lighted the fire with peppermint-
sticks, and the two children opened the doors of his wonderful
cupboards. The crockery in the left-hand cupboard was the right sort
of crockery, for none of it matched; so it did not take a minute to
find a small pink cup and a green saucer for Eyebright, and a big
blue cup and a red saucer for the magician, and a nice purple mug
without any saucer at all for King Wistful. As for the right-hand
cupboard, the little King was overjoyed when he found it stocked
with jumbles and chocolate creams and plum-cake. "I am glad," he
said with a sigh of relief, "that you don't keep seed-cake in your
cupboard. Seed-cake always reminds me of eleven o'clock in the
morning."
"Ah," said the magician, "the wymps saw to that, when they filled
my cupboard for me, centuries ago. There's never any bread-and-
butter in it, either—until you've had as much plum-cake as you can
eat."
That was a delightful tea-party. The magician did not mind in the
least when they made polite remarks about the food and told him
his jumbles might have been kept a little longer with advantage, or
that his chocolate creams were not quite so soft as some they had
known. But they hastened to add that his tea was the nicest tea
they had ever tasted because it had only a grown-up amount of milk
in it, so he would have been rather a cross magician if he had
minded. Nor did he raise any objection when they walked about in
the middle of tea and took a look at the picture-book, or whittled
away the piece of firewood, or danced round the cave and shouted
because everything was so nice. And after tea there were all the
magician's treasures to be turned out of odd nooks and corners and
left about on the floor, and all his new quill pens to be tried, and his
clean sheets of note-paper to be scribbled over. And when they were
tired of exploring the cave and had eaten as much plum-cake as
they wanted, the magician saw it was the right moment to begin
telling them really true stories; and as he was a magician, of course
his true stories were all fairy stories, which, as every one knows, are
the only true stories in the world worth believing. But even the
stories came to an end at last, and then both the children
remembered at once why they had come to see the magician.
"Well, what can I do for you?" he asked, before they had time to say
anything; for, truly, he would not have been a magician at all if he
had not known what they were thinking about. He smiled so
encouragingly that the little King answered him at once.
"It's like this," he began, "there's something wrong with the way I
see things."
"Of course there is," said the magician: "the wymps threw dust in
your eyes when you were a baby; and you cannot expect to see
things in the same light as other people when the wymps have once
thrown dust in your eyes."
"Why did they throw dust in my eyes?" asked little King Wistful.
"Usual reason," answered the magician, briefly. "They were not
asked to your christening, that's all. If people will persist in leaving
the wymps out when they give a party, they must take the
consequences. However, as you were not to blame in the matter, the
wymps would be the first to own that you ought not to be
bewymped any longer. The best thing you can do is to go up to
Wympland yourself and ask them to take away the spell."
The little King looked at Eyebright and hesitated. "It is a long way to
go all alone," he remarked; and Eyebright immediately stepped up to
him and took his hand.
"I'll come with you," she said; "I've always longed to go to the other
side of the sun. How are we to get there, magician?"
"Well," answered the magician, "the usual way is to climb up a
sunbeam, but that's not very quick and sunbeams are apt to be
slippery in the dry weather. Shall I send you up in a flash of lightning
or on the spur of a lark?"
"Spur of a lark!" echoed the King. "You mean on the spur of a
moment, don't you?"
"Not a bit of it," answered the magician; "you'd never get up to
Wympland on the spur of anything but a lark, I can tell you! You
have to get up there very early in any case, if you want to be even
with the wymps; so the best way is to rise with the lark. However, as
it is getting rather late in the day for larks, I had better send you up
in a lightning flash. Will you manage it alone, or shall I send a
conductor with it?"
"Would the conductor show us the way?" asked Eyebright.
"Dear me, no," said the magician. "Lightning conductors never show
anything but the stupidity of some people. Perhaps you'd better
have the lightning without a conductor; so stand on one side, while I
pick you out a nice quiet flash without any thunder hanging to it."
He took down a large sack, labelled Storms, from the shelf, untied
the top and plunged his head into it. Eyebright stole a little closer to
the King than before and hoped that nothing would go off with a
bang.
"I say," said his Majesty, putting his arm round her, "it strikes me—"
"That is impossible," interrupted the magician in a stuffy voice from
the middle of the sack, "for I've got it in both hands, and it isn't
going to strike anybody so long as you treat it kindly. Now, off you
go in a flash!"
And off they did go in something, though they never knew what it
was, for they had no time to see anything before they found
themselves dropped with a thud on the other side of the sun. For a
moment or two they just lay where they had fallen without moving;
then they sat up and rubbed their eyes and looked round.
"Oh!" exclaimed Eyebright, clasping her hands tight; "I had no idea
it was like this."
Of course Eyebright knew no more about Wympland than she had
learned in her geography lessons, and we all know how little
geography books ever tell us about the really nice places in the
world. So, although she knew as well as any other little girl that
Wympland has no physical features and its inhabitants have no
occupation, that its climate is dull and foggy and its government is a
sleeping monarchy, she was not in the least prepared for what she
did see.
"Well," said a voice somewhere near, "what do you think of it?"
Just in front of them a wymp was standing on his head, which is a
wymp's favourite way of resting his legs. He seemed to expect an
answer, so the King did his best to think of one that should be both
polite and truthful. As a matter of fact, he did not think much of
Wympland at all.
"It—it is rather full of fog, isn't it?" he began, a little nervously.
The wymp looked distinctly hurt; but before he had time to get
angry Eyebright put things right in her quiet little way.
"I don't think it is yellow fog," she said; "it is more like dull
sunshine."
The wymp fairly wympled when he heard this.
"You've hit it!" he cried in a delighted tone; "that's what it is really.
It's the folks from the front of the sun who call it yellow fog; they're
blinded by their own sunshine, they are. This is the back of the sun,
you see, and the sunshine naturally loses a bit of its polish by the
time it has worked through."
"I think I like bright sunshine best," observed the King.
"That is absurd!" said the wymp. "Why, you can't look at it without
blinking, to begin with. In Wympland you get all the advantages of
the sun and none of the drawbacks,—no sunblinds or sunstrokes or
sunspots! You must be a stupid boy if you can't see that!"
"It is your fault, not mine," answered the King boldly; "you shouldn't
have thrown dust in my eyes if you wanted me to see Wympland in
the right light!"
The wymp turned several somersaults to show his amazement at the
King's words, and finally stood thoughtfully on one leg.
"That's serious," he said. "We didn't know you'd ever come up here,
or we shouldn't have done it. However, it can't be helped now, so
you'd better go back again. It doesn't matter if you do see things
wrong—at the front of the sun."
"But it does matter!" they both exclaimed; "and that's why we want
you to take away the spell, please."
The wymp stood on his head again and shook it from side to side,
which no one but a wymp could have done, considering the
awkwardness of the position. "There's only one thing to be done,"
he said at last. "You must exchange eyes."
They stared at the wymp and then at each other. The little King
began to think busily, but Eyebright spoke without thinking at all.
"Very well," she said. "How is it to be done?"
"Quite easy," answered the wymp, cheerfully. "All you've got to do is
to wish with all your might to have the King's eyes instead of your
own, and there you are!"
At that moment the King finished his thinking. "Stop!" he shouted.
"If I take her eyes away, she will always see things wrong!"
But the King had spoken too late. Eyebright had already wished with
all her might, and her eyes had turned as blue as deep water while
his Majesty's were round and large and brown.
"What fun!" she cried, laughing happily. "Isn't it a nice change to
have somebody else's eyes?"
The little King, however, was far too furious to listen to her.
"Stand up and let me knock you down!" he cried, shaking his fist at
the wymp. "Look what you have done. She will see things wrong to
the end of her days!"
"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 quantities and quantities 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 grass 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 godfather, the magician Smilax, for nothing ever put her into
such a good temper as a visit to her godfather. 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 godchild 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 godchild 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 godchild, 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, godfather; I
want to be a real princess," objected the Green Enchantress.
Smilax shook his head. "Then I cannot help you," he said. "Nobody
can make a real princess,—not even the Fairy Queen herself. Real
princesses make themselves, and that is a very different matter."
"Shall I never go to court, then?" asked his godchild, with tears in
her eyes.
"Of course you shall!" said Smilax. "Can you not go to court without
being a princess? There is a back door to the palace as well as a
front one, and any ordinary person can get in at the back door. But
you must give up all your witchcraft the moment you set foot in the
palace, for it is impossible to be an ordinary person and a bewitching
one at the same moment."
"I don't mind that," said his godchild. "If I cannot bewitch the King I
do not want to be an enchantress any more. I will go to the palace
this very minute!"
And so she did, and that was how it came about that there was a
new scullery-maid at the palace; and, one fine morning, the King
met her all among the vegetables, as he took his stroll in the garden
after breakfast. It is extremely probable that the King would not
have noticed her at all if she had not happened to be wearing a
bright green handkerchief tied over her dark red hair. He felt sure
that he had seen that bright green and that dark red somewhere
before, so he stopped and looked at her.
"What are you doing?" he asked her, with a smile.
"I am picking beans for the King's dinner," answered the little
scullery-maid.
"How extremely kind of you!" exclaimed the King, who had always
supposed that the beans for his dinner picked themselves. "Will you
let me look at them?"
She held out her basket, and the King peeped inside and found it full
of bright scarlet flowers.
"Are those beans?" asked the King in wonderment, and he thought
he had never seen anything so charming before.
"I hope so," said the little scullery-maid with an anxious sigh, for she
knew no more about it than the King and was dreadfully afraid of
being scolded for picking the wrong thing. Indeed, she had hardly
finished speaking when the angry voice of the chief cook called her
from the back door; and away she scampered down the garden
path.
Every one noticed how absent-minded the King was at dinner, that
day. He talked even less than usual, and when the fifteenth course
came round he turned reproachfully to the Prime Minister.
"I thought I was going to have beans for dinner," observed the King,
in a disappointed tone.
"Your Majesty has just helped himself to beans," said the Prime
Minister, when he had recovered from his surprise at the King's
remark.
"What?" exclaimed the King, looking at his plate. "Are these the
beautiful scarlet beans that grow in my kitchen-garden? Impossible!"
"They turn green when they are cooked, your Majesty," said the
Prime Minister, who had never seen a bean growing in his life but
could not possibly have owned such a thing before the court.
"Then let me have my beans before they are cooked, in future," said
the King; and the Prime Minister hastily made a note of it on his
clean cuff.
There was a magnificent ball at the palace that evening, and the
King had ninety-nine delightful princesses to dance with, but none of
them had dark red hair, and when he had finished dancing with the
ninety-ninth he once more turned reproachfully to the Prime
Minister.
"Where is the hundredth Princess?" he demanded impatiently.
The Prime Minister knew no more about the hundredth Princess than
he had known about beans, and he wished he had gone to bed
instead of coming to the court ball to be worried by the King's
questions. He was too sleepy, however, to invent any more answers,
so he had to tell the truth; and no doubt he would have made a
much better Prime Minister if he had always been too sleepy to
invent things that were not true, but that, of course, has nothing to
do with the story.
"I have never heard of the hundredth Princess, your Majesty," he
said wearily. "Would it please your Majesty to tell me what she is
like?"
He fully expected the King to be exceedingly angry, and he
wondered whether he should be beheaded at once or only
imprisoned in one of the King's dungeons. It was therefore a great
surprise to him when the King burst out laughing and was not in the
least offended.
"I never heard of her myself until this morning," said the King. "She
has wonderful dark red hair, and she is so sweet and so kind that
she actually picks the vegetables for my dinner!"
The Prime Minister was so relieved at not being put into a dungeon
that he positively yawned in the King's presence; and the King, for
the first time in his life, noticed that he looked tired and sent him
home to bed, which was certainly a much nicer place to send him to
than a dungeon. And as for the Prime Minister, he went on speaking
the truth to the end of his days.
The next morning, the King hastened into his garden the moment he
had swallowed his breakfast. The chief huntsman met him just as he
was leaving the palace, and asked him what time it would please
him to start for the hunt.
"Hunt?" cried the King, impatiently. "What hunt? I am going to pick
the vegetables for my dinner, and that is ever so much more
important!" And he ran down the steps and across the lawn, as
never a King ran before.
The little scullery-maid was wandering among the gooseberry
bushes with a very disconsolate look on her face. "I am looking for
sage to stuff the King's ducks with," she said, when the King came
hurrying towards her; "but I don't know a bit what it is like, and how
can I be expected to pick things when I don't know what to pick?"
"Do not look so distressed," said the King, for her eyes were full of
tears. "I am the King, and I do not mind whether my ducks are
stuffed or not."
"Ah, but the chief cook does," said the little scullery-maid, who, of
course, had known all the while that he was the King. "The chief
cook will beat me if I do not fill my basket with sage. Look! this is
where he beat me yesterday for bringing the wrong beans."
She rolled up her sleeve and showed him a tiny black speck on her
dainty white arm. To be sure, it was not much of a bruise, but when
one has been an enchantress all one's life it is a little hard to be
beaten for not knowing enough. The King was quite overcome with
distress, and he stooped and kissed the little black mark tenderly;
and that, as every one knows, is the only way to cure a bruise.
"Come with me," he said, "and I will help you to find some sage.
Then the King's ducks will be stuffed, and the chief cook will not be
able to beat you."
So the King and the scullery-maid wandered all over the kitchen-
garden and hunted for sage. And the King knew just as much about
it as the scullery-maid, and the scullery-maid knew as much as the
King, and that was just exactly nothing at all; so there is no doubt
that the King's ducks would never have got stuffed that day, if the
pair of them had not suddenly stumbled upon a bush of rosemary.
"Does it not smell sweet?" exclaimed the little scullery-maid, and she
picked a whole handful of it and gave it to the King.
"Surely," cried the King, "anything so charming as this must be the
very thing we are looking for!"
The angry voice of the chief cook sounded once more from the back
door, so they did not stop to think any more about it but filled the
basket with rosemary as fast as they could; and then away
scampered the little scullery-maid down the path, while the King
stood and watched the little curls of dark red hair that fluttered in
the breeze.
The chief cook was far too grand a person to stuff the King's ducks,
so he left it to the little scullery-maid; and the result was that the
King's ducks were stuffed with rosemary. There were only two
people in the palace who enjoyed their dinner that day: one was the
King, who sat at the head of the royal table and had three helpings
of roast duck; and the other was the little scullery-maid, who sat on
the back doorstep and ate the scrapings of all the plates out of a big
brown bowl. As for the courtiers, they never forgot that dinner as
long as they lived; but this was not surprising, for ducks that are
stuffed with rosemary are surely ducks to be remembered.
After that, the courtiers had to eat a good many nasty things for
dinner. Every day the chief cook sent the little scullery-maid into the
garden to pick something for the King's dinner, and every day the
King came and helped her to find it; and although they never found
the right thing and although it was generally very nasty, the King
always ate three helpings of it, and that was all that mattered to the
chief cook. To be sure, it was a lot of trouble to take, just to please
the chief cook, and it would have been far simpler to have cut off his
head then and there; but neither the King nor the scullery-maid
thought of that. After all, it was much nicer to go on meeting each
other among the gooseberry bushes, and it certainly saved the
expense of an execution.
Before long people began to wonder what had come over the King.
He never went near the royal forest, and when he was not in the
kitchen-garden he was in the library, looking for books that would
tell him the difference between a banana and a turnip and the best
place to find a cauliflower. The chief huntsman and all the other
huntsmen had never been so dull in their lives; but the wild boars
and all the other animals were as happy as the day was long. Even
the rabbits began to pop up their heads above the bracken, and
were quite amazed when they found that no one was waiting to kill
them. "Truly," they squeaked to one another, "the Green Enchantress
must have bewitched the King after all!" And perhaps they were not
far wrong.
Now, the same thing cannot go on for ever; and one morning, when
the King hastened out into the garden as usual, the scullery-maid
saw at once that he had something important to say.
"There is to be a ball to-morrow," he told her. "The Prime Minister
says so! And there will be ninety-nine princesses there besides
yourself."
The little scullery-maid shook her head. "I shall not be there," she
said. "I am only a scullery-maid; and no one, not even the Fairy
Queen, can make me into a real princess."
"You are the hundredth Princess," declared the King; "and no one,
not even the Fairy Queen, can make you into a scullery-maid."
"The ninety-nine other princesses have never picked the vegetables
for the King's dinner," sighed the little scullery-maid.
"They would never do anything half so sweet nor so kind," said the
King.
"The ninety-nine other princesses," continued the little scullery-maid,
looking down at her crumpled print gown, "have never worn such an
old frock as mine!"
"Nor have they ever looked half so beautiful or so charming," said
the King.
The angry voice of the chief cook sounded loudly from the back
door, and the little scullery-maid turned to run down the path as
usual. But, this time, the King caught her by the hand and held her
back.
"Will you come to the ball and dance with me?" he asked coaxingly.
She looked very sad. "I am not a real princess, you see," she sighed.
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
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 grass-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.
Now, Prince Amaryllis had been waiting a great many days for some
one to appear at the top of the wall, but now that some one really
had appeared there and was looking so extremely glad to see him,
he suddenly found he had nothing whatever to say to her. That is
what occasionally happens to the most charming of princes.
Fortunately, however, the Princess knew perfectly well what to say to
him.
"I knew there would be something nice on the other side of my
wall," she cried. "The wymp was quite wrong, wasn't he?"
"No doubt he was, if you say so," answered the Prince, who had
never noticed the wymp at all. "But how is it, little lady, that you can
see me?"
The Princess opened her big eyes and stared at him. "How can I
help seeing you, if you are there?" she asked.
"But I'm not here, that's just it," explained Prince Amaryllis; "at
least, I am not supposed to be. You see, I have been invisible all my
life, and you are the first person, outside my own country, who has
ever been able to see me. I am very glad you can see me," he
added politely; "one gets a little tired sometimes of being heard and
not seen."
"When I was a little girl," said Princess Gentianella, drawing herself
up to her full height, "I was always taught to be seen and not heard.
That was very dull, too. But tell me, why is it that you are invisible?"
"Alas!" said the Prince. "The whole of my country is invisible, too.
Tell me what you can see, Princess, from the top of your wall."
"I can see you," answered the little Princess, promptly.
"But do you see nothing else?" asked Prince Amaryllis.
The Princess shaded her eyes with her hand and looked away into
the distance. "I can see a large flat plain, with no trees and no rivers
and no people and no houses," she answered presently.
Prince Amaryllis sighed. "You are looking right into my country," he
said dolefully, "and it is every bit as full of trees and rivers and
people and houses as anybody else's country. Do you not hear
anything either?"
"Oh, yes," said Princess Gentianella; "I can hear the murmur of
voices and the ripple of rivers and the rustle of trees. I have heard
those sounds all my life, but I thought they were in the wind."