In a country that is so far away that only wymps and fairies ever live long enough to get there, an exceptional King and Queen once ruled over their five children, a devoted nation, and each other. Now, the five children had five gardens all in a row; and four of these belonged to the King's four sons, and were just as beautiful as gardens cannot help being, which is surely beautiful enough for ordinary folk. The Princess Gentianella, however, was anything but an ordinary princess; and her garden, the one that came at the end of the row, was far more beautiful than any one could possibly describe. This was hardly to be wondered at, for, while the four Princes had to work very hard in their gardens before anything would grow in them, the fairies just came and breathed on the Princess's garden, and everything that was bright to see and sweet to smell grew up in it. Even the wymps did not play any tricks with the Princess's garden; for they had given her their warm little wympish hearts the moment she was born; so they allowed the sun to shine on her charming flower-beds as much as it pleased—and, of course, it pleased the sun to shine there very often indeed.
Now, the Princess's garden was surrounded by a wall. When she was quite a little girl, the King and Queen had ordered the wall to be built, just high enough to keep her from looking over it; and every time that the Princess grew a little more, another row of bricks was added to the wall, so that, by the time she had stopped growing altogether, the wall was ever so much higher than she was. She was such a dainty little Princess, though, that even then it was not a very high wall. Still, it was high enough to prevent her from seeing what was on the other side; and this annoyed her so much that all the pretty flowers the fairies could give her did not make up for the things she was not tall enough to see. The King and Queen had no idea of this; they loved their little daughter extremely, and they only thought how clever and how wise they were to keep her from looking into the world that lay outside her garden. "She might see something to frighten her, if she could see over the wall," they said.
The four Princes had no walls round their gardens, and what was more, they could see over the wall of their sister's garden, too; but they never thought of telling her what they saw.
"Boys always have all the fun," sighed the little Princess. "I wish I were a boy!"
Then, one by one, the three elder Princes rode away into the world and left their gardens to run to seed; and at last the time came for the King's youngest son to go too.
"It will be dreadfully dull when you have gone away," said the Princess, who was sitting on the grass-plot in her garden when Prince Hyacinth came to say good-bye to her.
"Oh no," answered her brother, with a smile; "you can still play in your pretty garden."