Peterkin was horrified. “Gracious me!” he stammered. “Where is her Royal Highness Whatever-you-called-her? I must apologize to her for bursting into her father’s palace so suddenly. Indeed, had I been able to, I should have walked in very humbly by way of the kitchen door or through the garden gate. But, don’t you see, I came so fast that I didn’t have time to choose. So lead me to the princess and let me beg her pardon.”
The little lady rubbed one set of pink toes over the other in a bashful fashion. Her laugh was as light as the rustle of green vines in the spring.
“You are pardoned, merry stranger,” she said. “It is I, the Princess Clematis, who bid you welcome to the palace of the Four Kingdoms.” Then she held out her hand.
Poor Peterkin! His face grew red with flushes. He sank to his knee—in spite of the big bruise on it—and planted a most courteous kiss upon her rosy finger tips. And, if the truth be told, the princess smiled a charming “how-do-you-do,” and found it very easy to forgive him.
But just at that moment, there came a loud rapping at the door and a hubbub of angry voices and a clanking of swords and spears against the walls.
“Ho, hola!” thundered someone without. “Open the door and let me in! I shall find whoever dares to pop into my royal daughter’s chamber, by way of the gilded dome. Ho, hola!”
At this, the little princess ran to fling open the door. And there, with a torch in his hand and a host of armed sentries behind him, stood His Majesty the King. Aye, no less a person than the monarch of the Four Kingdoms himself. Peterkin knew him at once by the jeweled crown which he wore atop his night-cap.
But before he could say a word, the little princess tripped to her father’s side and commenced a sly tickling at his nightie, just where his royal ribs ought to be. And under his crown, the King was just a jolly old man after all. He tried very hard to purse his lips and frown—but under such gentle tickling, there was nothing for it but to burst into a great roaring of laughter. He laughed, laughed—until his eyes were wet and his sides were aching. All of which put him in a better mood and made him look more kindly upon his strange visitor. He clapped the frightened Peterkin upon the back and called him a merry dog, and ended by marching off with him, arm in arm, to the palace’s spare bed-room to give him royal shelter for the night.
Thus it was that the princess, with a little wise tickling, saved a stranger’s life and brought much joy to the Four Kingdoms. But you shall have all that explained another time.