“I am sorry to say I can’t bake ginger-nuts,” said the first princess, in answer to the king’s question, “but I can bake delicious little almond-cakes. Wouldn’t those do?”
“No!” replied the king, “nothing short of ginger-nuts will do!”
The second princess snapped her fingers when he asked her, and said pettishly, “Go away with your nonsense! There is no such thing as a princess who can bake ginger-nuts.”
But the king fared worse than this even with the third, who was, alas! the fairest and cleverest. She gave him no opportunity to ask his question; before he could do so, she confronted him with a query on her part asking him if he knew how to play on the Jew’s-harp. When he answered in the negative she rejected him, politely expressing her regrets. She liked him well enough, she said; but she had a particular fancy for the Jew’s-harp, and it was her firm intention to marry no man unable to play upon that instrument.
So the king and his minister drove home again, and as he was getting down from the carriage he said quite dejectedly, “So this was a wild-goose chase!”
But a king must needs have a queen, and some time later he sent for the minister once more, and informed him that he had given up finding a wife who could bake ginger-nuts, and resolved to marry the princess they had visited first. “It is the one who knows how to bake little almond-cakes,” he added. “Go and ask her if she will be my wife.”
The next day the minister came back, and narrated to him how the princess was quite out of the reach of such offers, having married the king of the land where capers grow.
“Well, then, go to the second princess!” But this time too the minister came home again without having accomplished his errand. The old king, he said, regretted exceedingly that it was quite out of his power to gratify him, his daughter having unfortunately died.
The king was very thoughtful for a while, but being quite determined to have a queen, he ordered his minister to go once more to the third princess, as there was no knowing but she too might have changed her mind. And the minister yielded to his orders, although his own inclination was quite averse to the project, and although his wife told him it would be quite useless. The king awaited his return in some trepidation. He was thinking of the question concerning the Jew’s-harp, and the recollection was no agreeable one.
But the third princess received the minister very graciously, and told him that once she had been quite determined to have only such a husband as could play on the Jew’s-harp; but that now, after all, she had come to the conclusion that dreams are flighty, especially the dreams of youth. She saw now, she said, that the realisation of her wish was quite out of the question, and as she had taken a fancy to the king she was willing to have him.