THE PRINCESS BY THE SEA
"I Heard you talking about flowerless plants," big Prue went on, "as I sat there by the window. I wonder if you would like to hear a little story of how they came to be without flowers."
"Please, yes!" and little Prue forgot her fern seed and hugged closer.
"Well, once upon a time there was a princess with a beautiful garden—"
"Is this the same princess that turned into a red rose?"
"Oh, no, this is another princess. There have been a great many princesses with gardens. This princess lived by the sea, where there was a meadow, and a cliff not far away, much like it is here. She loved her flowers more than anything in the world, and her garden was so beautiful that even the fairies loved it better than their own gardens of fairyland and came at midnight to dance in the moonlight, after the princess was asleep.
"And the princess knew that they danced there, for once a gentle fairy had come to her and told her of it, and warned her never to try to see them, for whoever sees the fairies dance by the midnight moon may meet with some dreadful misfortune, which even the fairies themselves cannot help.
"But when the princess heard about the fairy dance, she wanted to see it very much. Instead of trying to forget it and going to bed before it began, she thought of it all the time, and the more she thought, the more she made up her mind to see it, no matter what might happen afterwards.
"So one night, just before twelve o'clock, she crept into a large cluster of blooming ferns—"
"But ferns do not bloom—"