“You will do no such thing!” wailed the Queen.
“There could have been no one here,” said the King, “for the gates were all locked.”
“Who told you that you had a fairy godmother?” asked the Queen.
And there was an end of that.
But that night, after the Princess had said her prayers and crept into bed, she heard her godmother calling to her from the Garden, so she slipped on her cloak and stole out into the moonlight. There was no one to be seen, so she pattered along in her little bare feet until she came to the gate in the wall.
While she was hesitating whether or not to run back to her little white bed, the gates of triple brass opened as easily as if her godmother had oiled them, and the Little Princess passed through the copper gates, and the iron gate, and out into fairyland.
But if you ask me why she saw the guards at the gates no more than they saw her, I can only tell you that I do not know, and you will have to be satisfied with that.
As for the Princess, she was as happy as a duck in a puddle. As she danced along through the forests, the flowers broke from their stems to join her, the trees dropped golden fruit into her very hands, and the little brook which runs through fairyland left its course, and followed her, singing.
And all the while, her godmother was coming down behind her, close at hand, to see that she came to no harm; but the Princess did not know that.
At last she came to the place where the Prince from the west lay sleeping. He was dreaming that he had climbed the wall and had found the Princess, so that he smiled in his sleep and she knelt above him, wondering, for she had never seen a man before, save her father, the King, and the Prince was very fair. So she bent closer and closer, until her breath was on his cheek, and as he opened his eyes, she kissed him.