"Only look at my finger," wept Princess Prunella, as she showed him her little hand. Truly, it was impossible to tell which of her small white fingers the Princess had pricked, but as the minstrel's son kissed every one of them in turn, it is clear that he must have healed the right one; and that, of course, was why the Princess stopped crying at once.
Then she looked at her old playfellow and laughed for joy to see him there again. "The wonderful look has come back into your face," she said, "but it is ever so much more wonderful than before!"
"Dear little playfellow," whispered the minstrel's son, "I can hear the forest sounds again, too; but you were right all the time, and the sounds of the town are much more charming than the sounds of the forest."
"Oh, no," declared the Princess. "There you are quite mistaken, for the sounds of the forest are more beautiful by far."
And it is a fact that they have been disputing the point ever since.
The Palace on the Floor
Prince Picotee had just built a fairy palace on the nursery floor, and he sat back on his heels and looked at it with pride. Surely, no one had ever built so fine a palace before in the space of thirteen minutes and a half! Not only were there two lofty towers that soared proudly upwards until they were actually as tall as the Prince himself, but there was a great arched doorway as well, with a flight of steps leading down from it away under the nursery table; and there was even a drawbridge, made of a single big brick and suspended by a piece of string. All this, however, might be found in anybody's palace; what made the Prince's palace different from every one else's was just the way the windows were built. They were not built in rows, like ordinary windows, so that any one could guess how dull and square the rooms were inside; but they appeared here and there as if by accident, sometimes at a corner, sometimes on the top of another window, sometimes under the battlements, wherever, in fact, the little builder-Prince had felt inclined to put a window; and the most wonderful thing of all was that, however much he tried to peep through them, he could not possibly see what the rooms were like beyond. So the palace he had built himself was full of beautiful halls and rooms and passages that no one would ever be able to see.