Evelyn Sharp

“ But when all the boys and girls burst out laughing, and pointed their fingers at him and began to tease, it was impossible to keep back his tears any longer. After all, one cannot go on remembering for ever that one is seven years old. The children, however, only laughed the more, when the little maker of the kite suddenly flung himself down on the ground and began to cry.
"What is the use of a kite that won't fly?" they jeered. "Take it home, Jerry, and make it the same size as other people's kites! And mind you let us know what the moon is like, when your kite gets there!" ”

“ 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. ”

“ Deaf Robert looked up at the pine-trees overhead and down to the flowers at his feet. "I used to be able to," he said sadly, "but even the forest has grown silent now." Then he clenched his fists and looked imploringly at his father. "Must I live to the end of my days without hearing any of the things that other boys hear?" he cried.
"You are a little unreasonable, my son," said the minstrel. "Are not the beautiful sounds of life enough for you?"
"Enough?" said deaf Robert. "I want much, much more than that, father. Why, I want to hear the Princess cry!" ”

“ 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. ”

“ One of them was different from all the others; it had a long bright tail that glittered like a cracker at Christmas time, and it was scurrying across the sky at such a pace that the rest of the stars had to get out of its way as best they could. Most of the people who looked out of their windows that night thought they saw a comet; but Jerry and Chubby knew better.
"Oh," they cried, clapping their hands with excitement. "There is our kite, and it is flying to the moon after all!"
"There's no doubt about that," said the wymp, who was still wimpling at them from the top of the thistle. ”

“ But it is impossible to be happy for long when one is bewitched; and, one day, Kit found himself in a part of the forest that was more horrible and more frightening than any dark passage that was ever invented on the way to any nursery. It was not only dark, but it was strangely silent as well; and a curious feeling of gloom and unhappiness suddenly crept over Kit. If it had been a nice sort of silence, the sort we find when we get away from the other boys and girls into a place where it is quiet enough to hear the real sounds of the air, Kit would still have been quite happy ”

“ Jerry, however, did not mean to have his journey to the moon for nothing.
"Please, may I take my kite back with me?" he asked boldly. "I want to show the other boys and girls that it did fly to the moon after all."
"That's all very well," objected the kite, who had stopped trembling and become impudent again; "but I don't want to go back among a lot of girls and boys who do not know how to appreciate me. When a fellow has once been a comet, you cannot expect him to end his days as a common kite." ”

“ You have no idea how stupid it is to live in a place that no one can see."
"But why does not someone disenchant your kingdom?" asked the Princess, who had read quite enough history to know that kingdoms are always disenchanted sooner or later.
"That is what I am trying to do," answered Prince Amaryllis. "The spell can only be removed if a king's son will spend a whole year in this waste piece of ground and make it into a beautiful garden. But although I have been here nearly a year, I have not been able to make a single flower grow. ”

“ In a few minutes, Dimples found herself in front of a curious meal, served on round cardboard dishes and consisting of one red jelly, two raw mutton chops, a bunch of grapes, and a slice of salmon.
"But they won't come off the dishes, will they?" asked Dimples, who had fed her dolls for years on the very things that were now placed before her.
"Of course not," said the toy captain. "They would have been lost long ago if they had not been stuck on. What more can you want? If you were a real person, as you pretend to be, your appetite would be taken away by the mere sight of dishes like those!" ”

“ 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. ”

“ When a kingdom has not been seen for a hundred years, naturally it keeps fresher than a kingdom that any one can stare at. Nothing fades a kingdom like staring at it, you know. However, all this will soon be altered, for I hear that the Prince has made the flowers grow in his garden; so all he has to do now is to marry the Witch's daughter, and then we shall be disenchanted at last. ”

“ Then he turned and walked through the gate and out into the forest once more.
The minstrel looked after him and sighed. "It was the best gift I could think of," he murmured; "it was the one I would have chosen for myself. It is true," he added thoughtfully, "that I never wanted to play with a King's daughter."
The minstrel's son wandered aimlessly through the forest,—the forest that he had once liked so well because it was all his, and that he only liked now because he had found his little Princess in it; and there he might have been wandering still, if he had not suddenly met a wymp. ”

“ It was beginning to grow dark now, and the country seemed more and more desolate.
"The world is not so full of people as I expected to find it," said Jerry, in a disappointed tone. "I do hope we shall soon meet some one who will know why my kite won't fly."
Just then, he thought he heard something from behind that sounded like a sob. Sure enough, there was Chubby, wiping her eyes with the corner of her pinafore.
"I'm so hungry," she sobbed. "I want my tea. Can't we go home, Jerry, and put off seeing the world until to-morrow?" ”

“ 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, [43] 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ The sky was covered with stars, hundreds and thousands of them, all twinkling round the moon just as Chubby had painted them on the kite. Only, she could not help thinking that her stars had more shape and were decidedly more like stars than the real stars were ”

“ Princess Gentianella gathered up her train with much dignity and turned her back on the Prince.
"People who are as forgetful as that deserve to be invisible," she observed haughtily; and with that she swept up the garden path and into the palace. She lost all her dignity, however, as soon as she was out of the Prince's sight; and it was a very doleful little Princess who came to take tea with her royal parents that afternoon. When she even went so far as [84] to say that she preferred bread-and-butter to plum-cake, the King and Queen began to be seriously alarmed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ That alone was enough to show that it was by no means an ordinary kite; so it was no wonder that Jerry felt very proud of himself when he ran on to the village green to fly it.
"Stand back, all of you!" he said, as the girls and boys came crowding round him. "Now, you shall see my kite fly to the moon!"
No doubt, Jerry was inclined to make quite enough fuss about his kite; but it is not every day that one has a chance of flying the biggest kite in the village, especially when one is only seven years old. ”

“ Now, it is not often that one gets a chance of playing with a King's daughter, so it is no wonder that, when the Princess followed her royal parents into the great hall on the appointed day, she found it filled from end to end with all the little princes and princesses and all the little counts and countesses and all the little dukes and duchesses that the surrounding kingdoms could produce. ”

“ Snow and stillness and space are wherever I go; when I smile, I make the whole world beautiful, but my smile takes the colour away from the flowers and the ripple away from the water and the warmth away from the sunshine. ”

“ 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.
[45]
"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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ As for the Witch, there is no Witch any longer, for she retired into private life as a nice old lady, just ten minutes ago. Now, as you all seem to have sorted yourselves the right way, the best thing you can do is to go off home as fast as you can."
No doubt that is where Anemone must have gone with her Prince, for when the little Princess looked round and found herself standing once more in her own garden, there was no one with her except Prince Amaryllis. ”

“ She had had no tea, to tell the truth, and was beginning to feel remarkably hungry.
"We will ask everybody we meet," said Jerry, who had had his tea and was therefore not at all hungry. "There is sure to be some [169] one in the world who can tell us, and we will not rest until we find him."
"We haven't met anybody yet," remarked Chubby, rather dolefully. "How long do you think we shall have to go on walking before we find the right person?" ”

“ The Lady of the Moon smiled contemptuously. "Stars, indeed!" she observed. "What does it matter how the stars are painted? The moon is far more important, and you have made a regular muddle of that! And who told you children that you might come into my country, I should like to know?"
"The wymp brought us," explained Jerry. "He was here a minute ago, but he has just left."
"No doubt he has," said the Lady of the Moon, with a little laugh that made them shiver. "Wymps know better than to come in my way. I can turn their laughter into [185] hoar-frost, and they don't like that. ”