Tell Me Another Story | Page 7

had even so much as heard of molasses pop-corn balls. The Court Messenger grew so worried that he could neither eat nor sleep, but one day as he wandered about in foreign places he smelled something like molasses boiling. He followed the odor and he came to a rich appearing palace. In he went, without waiting to knock, and beside the kitchen fireplace he discovered a Princess with blue eyes and yellow hair that curled. She was stirring molasses in a kettle with one hand, and shaking a corn popper with the other.
"What are you making?" begged the Messenger in great excitement.
"Molasses pop-corn balls," said the little Princess.
"Are you sweet tempered?" asked the Messenger.
"I never cry, or scold," said the little Princess.
"Then come with me and be the Prince's playmate," said the Messenger. "We must have a Princess who will make him pop-corn balls every day."
The little Princess looked up in surprise. "Can the Prince play to me on a jews-harp?" she asked.
"I do not think his Highness can," said the Messenger.
"Then I can't go with you," said the little Princess. "I will go only to a Prince who can play on a jews-harp."
"I won't learn to play on a jews-harp," said the little Prince when they told him about it.
So he was without a sister and a playmate, and every day he grew more lonely and more unhappy. But he thought a great deal and at last he said:
"I should like to have that little Princess very much. Will you ask her if she will come if she does not have to make molasses pop-corn balls?"
Now, all this time, the Princess had been thinking too. When the Court Messenger gave her the Prince's message, she smiled and said she would come. "The Prince need not play to me on a jews-harp if he does not want to," she said.
So they packed her clothes in ten trunks, and she rode in a gold chariot to the palace of the Prince. The doors were opened wide to greet her, and through them came the sound of the merriest music. The Princess clasped her hands in happiness.
"Who is playing the jews-harp?" she asked. "I am so fond of one."
Just then the Prince came in. It had been he who was playing. He had learned how for her pleasure.
"What are you carrying in that basket?" he asked of the little Princess.
"Some molasses pop-corn balls that I made for you," she said. "And I will make you some to-morrow, dear Prince."

THE STAR-CHILD
Once upon a time a poor Woodcutter was making his way through a pine forest. It was winter, and a night of bitter weather. So cold was it that even the animals and the birds did not know what to make of it. The little Squirrels who lived inside the tall fir tree kept rubbing each other's noses to keep warm, and the Rabbits curled themselves up in their holes and did not even look out of doors.
And as the Woodcutter pressed on toward home, bewailing his lot, there fell from heaven a very bright and beautiful star. It slipped down the side of the sky, passing by the other stars, and it seemed to sink behind a clump of willow trees no more than a stone's throw away.
"Why, there is a crock of gold for whoever finds it," he said, and he hastened toward it. Stooping down, he placed his hands upon a thing of gold lying on the white snow. It was a cloak of golden tissue, curiously wrought with stars, and wrapped in many folds. There was no gold in it, but only a little child who was asleep.
Very tenderly the Woodcutter took up the child and wrapped the cloak around it to shield it from the harsh cold, and he made his way down the hill to the village.
"I have found something in the forest," he said to his wife when he reached the poor house where they lived.
"What is it?" she cried. "The house is bare and we have need of many things." So he drew the cloak back and showed her the sleeping child.
"It is a Star-Child," he said, and told her of the strange manner of finding it.
"But our children lack bread; can we feed another?" she asked.
"God careth for the sparrows even," he answered.
So after a time she turned round and looked at him, and her eyes were full of tears. And he came in swiftly, and placed the child in her arms, and she kissed it, and laid it in a little bed where the youngest of their own children was lying. And on the morrow the Woodcutter took the curious cloak of gold and placed it in a great chest, and a chain of amber that was round the child's neck his wife