More Tales in the Land of Nursery Rhyme | Page 9

a little digging, if only he might see her face again. The first thing to be done the next day was to dismiss all the gardeners; and of all the court only Sir Richard Byrde and Sir Hunny Bee were allowed to stay in the back-yard, where the King was going to work with his own hands.
Sometimes in the long days that followed, the Princess sent out her two nymphs, Wynde and Worta to help him--but all the really hard work he had to do quite alone. Long days they were, for first there was so much, much, digging to be done. All the patent soils had got mixed up, and twisted and turned the King's spade as he tried to dig. He was not accustomed to digging either, and disliked getting hot, and also getting blisters on his kingly hands--but as he toiled on he thought of the Princess and her lovely garden.
Day after day he worked and worked. He felt as if each little tiny task took him years and years; and then he had to wait what seemed to him an eternity before anything happened at all; and then another eternity before the Princess would come and smile upon his garden.
"Will it never be a garden?" he said at last. "Will you never come and smile on it, and shall I never see your face again."
"Not to-day," she said.
At last, one day, after a long time, when his back was bowed with digging and his hands horny with working, he suddenly stopped, for a strange light seemed to be shining from the Palace steps behind him.
"Do not look round yet," said the Princess' soft voice. "Look straight in front of you first."
He stood quite still, staring at what had been, until now, the backyard.
As he gazed there appeared before him paths of grass, green as emeralds and sparkling with dew, and bordered on each side with shells that glowed like mother-o'-pearl. Flowers, flowers everywhere, Canterbury bells, and sunflowers, roses, lilies and lavender. Fruit trees of gold and silver glittering in the sunshine, and behind, great dark leafy trees inviting to shade and coolth. Fountains splashing, and birds singing. He rubbed his eyes, thinking he must be dreaming.
Then he turned--and there, standing on the Palace steps, was the Princess. No veil covered her face now. There she stood in all her glorious golden beauty--smiling, radiant, as her name.
"You have your garden at last," she said.
Now this story might have been written about any garden, yours or mine. For the honey bee still helps to grow the Canterbury bells, and the birds still help to scatter seeds, and people still line their paths with cockle shells, and sunflowers are still called "fair maids" in the country. As for the Princess Mary Radiant--why, it's only in the sunshine that the bells look like silver, and the cockle-shells like mother-o'-pearl, and it's only to the sun that the sunflowers turn their heads every day . . . and we all know the sun can be "contrary" enough!

JACK AND JILL
"When the well is dry, they know the worth of water"
Jack and Jill Went up the hill, To fetch a pail of water; Jack fell down And broke his crown, And Jill came tumbling after.
"Oh dear, how I hate the rain," said Jack to Jill, as they stood at the window watching the drops trickling down the window-pane. "We can't do anything really nice when it is raining. I wish someone would take all the rain away so that we could have nothing but fine days."
I have heard Jacks and Jills say much the same things nowadays! But this particular Jack and Jill do not live nowadays at all. They lived a very long time ago, in a far-off country. So long ago, and so far off, that witches were still alive, and one of them actually lived in their own village!
The village straggled up the side of a hill, and the Witch's cottage was at the top of it.
It was a queer-looking, tumble-down place, but people said that from it there were trap doors and passages leading to all sorts of caves and cellars dug out of the ground underneath. It was surrounded by very high branching palings with skull-shaped knobs on the top of them.
The people in the village hardly ever saw the old Witch, except during thunderstorms and after late winter parties; but everyone who had seen her, declared that she was very ugly, and beyond a doubt very wicked. She had an uncomfortable way, too, of sometimes appearing suddenly when she was not wanted, and granting people's wishes. This sounds very nice, but it may be horribly inconvenient. The villagers realised this, and it had become the fashion never to wish for anything; and so, despite the presence of