Here's another day!
W. Graham Robertson.
Used by permission of John Lane Company.
THE SUMMER PRINCESS
Mrs. Molesworth
Once upon a time, in a country far to the north of the world, lived a King and a Queen who had everything they could wish for except an heir to their throne. That does not mean that they had no troubles at all. The Queen thought she had a good many and the King had one which was more real than any of her fancied ones. His Queen was a terrible grumbler. She was a grumbler by nature, and besides this she had been a spoiled child.
As she was very beautiful and could be very sweet and charming when in a contented mood, the King had fallen deeply in love with her when he was on his travels round the world, and had persuaded her to leave her own home in the sunny South to accompany him to his northern kingdom.
There she had much to make her happy. While the first summer lasted she almost forgot to grumble, but when the winter came fierce and boisterous as it always is in those lands, she grew very miserable. She shivered with cold and, instead of bracing herself to bear it, she wrapped herself in her furs and sat from morning till night cowering over a huge fire. Although she brightened up as each summer came around, with the return of each winter it was again the same sad story.
However, one day late in the autumn she actually forgot her terror of the cold so far as to remain out walking in the grounds of the palace, though the snow clouds were gathering thick and heavy overhead.
She was alone. For sometimes in her saddest moods she could bear no one, not even the most faithful of her ladies, near her.
"If only I had a child of my own I would never complain of anything again."