"They told me you were the most beautiful woman in the world, so I came to see if it was true," said the King.
"And now you are here, do you think it is true?" asked the girl in green.
"I suppose so," said the King, doubtfully; "but I don't know much about girls. If you were a wild boar, now, or——"
"But I'm not a wild boar!" cried the Green Enchantress; and she was so angry at being compared to a wild boar that she promptly threw a spell over the King and tried to turn him into a wild boar. But the King went on being a king, just the same as before, and he had no idea that he was expected to be a wild boar at that very moment.
"When are you going to tell me all the things you know?" he asked her, smiling.
"I have forgotten what there was to tell," said the Green Enchantress, sulkily; and she got up and walked away among the trees. The King wondered what he had done to offend her, and he tried hard to remember whether he had ever offended any of the princesses who came to court; but as none of the princesses who came to court ever thought of showing their feelings, he would not have known if he had.
Meanwhile the Green Enchantress was feeling very cross indeed. "What is the use of being an enchantress if people refuse to be enchanted?" she grumbled; and she ran off as fast as she could to find her godfather, the magician Smilax, for nothing ever put her into such a good temper as a visit to her godfather. Now, Smilax was the most amiable magician the world has ever contained, and he lived in an ordinary little cottage with a green door and a white doorstep and a red chimney-pot, and he did not look like a magician at all. All the same, Smilax was by no means a stupid magician, as the rest of the story will show.
"What is the matter?" he asked, when his godchild ran in at the door. "Do you want me to teach you a new spell?"
"No, indeed!" cried the Green Enchantress. "I am tired of spells; I want something much better."
"Well, well," said the kind old magician, "let us hear what it is all about, and then we'll see what we can do."