Little King Wistful slipped through the palace gates and went out into his kingdom to look for something new. He was only eight years old, so he was not a very big King; but he had been King as long as he could remember, and he had been looking for something new the whole time. Now, his kingdom was entirely made of islands, and in the days when the old King and Queen were alive these islands were known as the Cheerful Isles. But King Wistful changed their name soon after he came to the throne, and insisted on their being called the Monotonous Isles. For, strange as it may sound, this little King of eight years old thought his kingdom was the dullest and the ugliest and the most wearisome place in the world, and nothing that his nurses or his councillors could do ever succeeded in making him laugh and play like other little boys.
"Only look at the stupid things!" muttered his Majesty impatiently, as he stood and surveyed his kingdom from the top of a small, grassy hillock. "Five round islands in a row; always five round islands in a row! If only some of them were square, it would be something!"
At the bottom of the hill was a wood, one of those pale-green baby woods, where the trees are young and slender and nothing grows very plentifully except the bracken and the heather. And as the King stood and felt sorry for himself at the top of the hill, out from the wood at the bottom of the hill came the sound of a little girl's voice, singing a quaint little song. And this was the song:—
"Sing-song! Don't be long!
Wistful, Wistful, come and play!
Sing-song! It's very wrong
To stay and stay and stay away!
The world is much too nice a place
To make you pull so long a face;
It's full of people being kind,
And full of flowers for you to find;
There's heaps of folks for you to tease
And all the naughtiness you please;
To sulk is surely waste of time
When all those trees are yours to climb!
Ting-a-ring! Make haste, King!
I've something really nice to say;
Ting-a-ring! A proper King
Would not make me sing all day!"
King Wistful thrilled all over with excitement. Was something really going to happen at last? He had hardly time to think, however, before the little singer came out of the wood into the open. She wore a clean white pinafore, and on her head was a large white sunbonnet, and under the sunbonnet were two of the brightest brown eyes the King had ever seen. He stepped down the hill towards her, wondering how anything so pretty and so merry could have come into his kingdom; and at the same instant the little girl saw the King and came running up the hill towards him, so it was not long before they stood together, hand in hand, half-way down the hillside.
"Where did you come from and who are you and how long have you been here?" asked the King, breathlessly.
"I am Eyebright, of course," answered the little girl, smiling; "and I've been here always."