"Because I left my Princess crying in her nursery two years ago, and I have been away from her ever since," answered the boy, simply.
The girl burst out laughing. "Well," she exclaimed, "that was a foolish thing to do!"
"Foolish?" shouted deaf Robert. "Did you say foolish?"
"To be sure I did," laughed the girl. "Could anything be more foolish than to keep away from some one whom you want to be with?"
"Then I will go back to her this very instant," declared the minstrel's son.
"And that would be the wisest thing you could do," answered the girl; and she immediately disappeared, cows and all, which just shows that she must have been a wymp all the while.
"Well," said deaf Robert, "there are my wise and my foolish deeds done together, and now I am a real boy!"
Then off he set homewards as fast as he could go; and although it had taken him two years to come away from home, it only took him two hours to get back again, so it is clear that the wymps must have had a hand in that, too. And just about tea-time he stood outside the nursery door in the palace of his own little Princess.
It is well to remember that the wymps had come to the christening of the minstrel's son; otherwise it might seem a little wonderful that the Princess Prunella should have pricked her finger again, on the very day that her Playfellow-in-chief came back to her. Anyhow, that is what had happened; and as the minstrel's son stood outside the door and listened, he heard the softest and the sweetest and the prettiest sound he had ever heard in his life.
"Hurrah!" he cried. "At last I can hear the Princess cry!" And he burst open the door and ran into the room, all in his rags and his tatters, and knelt down to comfort the King's daughter.