With that, before the King could reprove her, the Princess would throw her arms about his neck, kiss him under the corner of his mustache, and go flying off to the tower-room where she had her embroidery frame.
Her mother, the Queen, was much upset by the Princess's attitude.
"In my youth," she said, "girls were not like this. We were brought up to think that courtship and marriage were the most important events in our lives. I don't know what's getting into the heads of the young girls nowadays!"
But the King, who was still smiling from the tickling little kiss which the Princess had planted under the corner of his mustache, always answered:
"Tut! Tut! We needn't worry yet! Take my word for it when some particular young man comes along she'll be interested fast enough!"
At this the Queen, ending the discussion every day with the same words, would shake her head and declare:
"I tell you it isn't natural for a girl to be more interested in embroidery than in a long line of handsome young suitors!"
The Princess was interested in her embroidery—there's no doubt about that. She spent every moment she could in the tower-room, working and singing. The tower was high up among the treetops. It was reached by winding stairs so narrow and so many that no one any older than the Princess would care to climb them. The Princess flew up them like a bird, scarcely pausing for breath. At the top of the stairs was a trap-door which was the only means of entrance into the tower-room. Once in the tower-room with the bolt of the trap-door securely fastened, the Princess was safe from interruption and could work away at her embroidery to her heart's content. The tower had windows on all sides, so the Princess as she sat at her embroidery frame could look out north, east, south, and west.
The clouds sailed by in the sky, the wind blew and at once the leaves in the treetops began murmuring and whispering among themselves, and the birds that went flying all over the world would often alight on some branch near the tower and sing to the Princess as she worked or chatter some exciting story that she could almost understand.
"What!" the Princess would think to herself as she looked out north, east, south, and west. "Leave my tower and my beautiful embroidery to become the wife of some conceited young man! Never!"