As she spoke, a veil of mist shrouded her face and her shining golden dress. The flowers grew dim, the fruits ceased to shine, the fair maids to curtsey, the fountains to play, and the birds to sing. The King shivered. "I thought that when you came I would have my garden at once," he muttered.
"Come," said the Princess gently.
Together they swam back to the Palace. The King was angry and disappointed, but the beautiful picture of the golden Princess smiling at him through the trees was fixed for ever in his mind. He began to think that he would not mind doing 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.