This grieved the King very sorely. He sent proclamations over land and sky and sea to men from other countries to come and make him a garden. He offered vast rewards. But, though gardeners had come from far and near, though the King himself had watched them from the palace steps, and had, once even, cut the first sod with a silver spade … yet, it was all no use. The garden wouldn't be made and the flowers wouldn't grow. Every kind of patent soil, seeds, hose, watering-cans, weed-killers and mowing machines had been tried in vain. There were stacks of them lying in the palace yard, but never a single flower, never even the beginnings of a garden.
One day the King, quite weary of looking through catalogues and interviewing possible gardeners, had fallen asleep in the little shed in the back-yard which was known as "The Arbour." As he slept he had a dream.
He dreamt that a little wizened old man came to him and said, "Catalogues and gardeners will not help you. You will never have a garden until you get the Princess Mary Radiant to come and shine on your back-yard. Only two men in all your kingdom can help you—Sir Hunny Bee and Sir Richard Byrde—but even these will be no use without the smile of the Princess Mary Radiant, and for her you must search over earth and sky and sea."
The King awoke from his sleep with a start.
"What ho! without there!" he cried. "Fetch me the Princess Mary Radiant!"
The assembled courtiers shook their heads.
"We have never heard of a lady with that name," they said. "Your Majesty must have been dreaming."
"Dream or no dream," said the King testily, "some one must fetch me the Princess Mary Radiant, for if she once smiles on my back-yard it will be turned into a garden with real grass and real flowers—Canterbury bells and sunflowers—that's what I have set my heart on!"
The courtiers answered nothing and shook their heads once more.
"We don't know such a lady," they repeated.