"What?" exclaimed the King, looking at his plate. "Are these the beautiful scarlet beans that grow in my kitchen-garden? Impossible!"
"They turn green when they are cooked, your Majesty," said the Prime Minister, who had never seen a bean growing in his life but could not possibly have owned such a thing before the court.
"Then let me have my beans before they are cooked, in future," said the King; and the Prime Minister hastily made a note of it on his clean cuff.
There was a magnificent ball at the palace that evening, and the King had ninety-nine delightful princesses to dance with, but none of them had dark red hair, and when he had finished dancing with the ninety-ninth he once more turned reproachfully to the Prime Minister.
"Where is the hundredth Princess?" he demanded impatiently.
The Prime Minister knew no more about the hundredth Princess than he had known about beans, and he wished he had gone to bed instead of coming to the court ball to be worried by the King's questions. He was too sleepy, however, to invent any more answers, so he had to tell the truth; and no doubt he would have made a much better Prime Minister if he had always been too sleepy to invent things that were not true, but that, of course, has nothing to do with the story.
"I have never heard of the hundredth Princess, your Majesty," he said wearily. "Would it please your Majesty to tell me what she is like?"
He fully expected the King to be exceedingly angry, and he wondered whether he should be beheaded at once or only imprisoned in one of the King's dungeons. It was therefore a great surprise to him when the King burst out laughing and was not in the least offended.