After breakfast Master Crow flew down with specs on beak and book under wing. He gave the little Princess a pencil, and a slate with a golden rim, and told her to sit on the grassy bank under a tree. Then Master Crow perched on a stump and opened his book with a “Caw, caw, caw!” He taught the little Princess to spell such words as SPRING and BIRDS and NESTS and EGGS. It was the nicest school she had ever heard of.
Whisk, the squirrel, watched from a nearby tree and was glad HE did not have to go to school.
When school was out, the little Princess wandered happily through the wood. A gentle fawn came springing over the lawn and walked beside her for a while. Seven frolicsome hares hopped and nibbled and played about the path. Whisk, the squirrel, and his mate followed too and stopped sometimes to eat a juicy blackberry. The birds flew and sang above them.
Late in the afternoon, the little Princess came to a mossy glade at the edge of the wood where the silly little mushrooms live, who grow up in a single night—red-caps, brown-caps and white-caps. They begged her to stop and tell them a story, so being a most obliging little Princess, she sat on the grass among them and told them tales of the great oak tree beside her father’s castle gate, which had taken hundreds of years to grow and had seen many storms and the coming and going of brave knights and fair ladies.
At last darkness fell and many bright little Star Children came with their star lanterns to light the little Princess home through the deep wood. She was sleepy, for she had laughed and worked and played all day, and was glad to see the towers of her father’s castle through the trees when the friendly Star Children had led her safely home.
