Now, when Prince Brilliant ran away from the Lady Daffodilia he found the road so hot and so dusty that he was obliged to keep near the hedge at the side; and he had not run very far before he pushed his head through a very elegant spider's web. The spider was exceedingly cross, and grumbled; but the daddy-longlegs that tumbled out of her web was very much pleased with himself.
"Well, my little friend," he said to the Prince, "where are you running so fast, this fine morning?"
Now, one of the things the Prince had learned from his Professor was the way to speak to a daddy-longlegs, so before another five minutes had passed he had told him the whole of his trouble. "Do you know the way to make your legs grow long?" asked the Prince at the end of his story.
"Well," said the daddy-longlegs, "that is certainly one of the things I am generally supposed to know; but if I show you the way, do you think you will have patience to do everything I tell you? It may take a very long time."
"I can wait years and years and years and years," said the Prince, in his determined way; and the daddy-longlegs had the sense to see that he meant what he said.
"Right you are," he said. "Then jump straight into that hedge; and the more spiders' webs you break on the way, the better—nasty, choky, stuffy things!"
"What shall I do when I get there?" asked the Prince.
"Oh, you haven't got to do anything," said the daddy-longlegs, with a chuckle. "Just wait there until I come to you."
"All right; but you won't be long, will you?" said the Prince; and he tucked his crown under his arm and shut his eyes tight and jumped straight into the thorny, prickly hedge.