"Did you get my message?" asked the Princess, fighting to keep back her angry tears.
"Let me see, there was a message of some sort," answered the tall man. "You sent for me, didn't you?"
"Yes," said the Princess, haughtily, "and you said I was to come and see you instead. It is positively shameful!"
"But you needn't have come, need you?" said the tall man.
Then the Princess stamped her tiny foot, and went away again up the garden path. And as she went she thought unconsciously of her yesterday's lover, the first one who had ever interested her at all; and she almost wished she had not sent him away, just because he did not dance well. It struck her now, for the first time, that perhaps there was something else he could do, such as digging potatoes, for instance.
"No, not digging potatoes!" she corrected herself, angrily, "that is a horrid, vulgar occupation. But something else, perhaps; for I dare say there are some people who do things that I have never heard of. I wonder what it feels like to do things of that description? Oh dear! I wish King Marigold would come back again!"
Her yesterday's lover had been a young King with a serious face, and the Princess could never bear people who looked serious; for, clearly, no one had any right to do that, unless he happened to be a beggar or a Prime Minister. All the same, she had wanted him back again ever since the tall man had been rude to her.
That evening there was a great ball at the palace. And the Princess was dressed for it by her eleven maids of honor; and they took three hours and a half over it, and only had twenty minutes left in which to dress themselves. When they came back again, the Princess Gyldea was gone, and no one knew where she was. The little page guessed, but he did not say anything, because he did not want to go down the garden path by moonlight, when the fairies were about, and might turn him into a frog or something unpleasant. Besides, the dew was falling, and he had his best dancing-shoes on, with real diamond buckles.
Sure enough, at the bottom of the garden, the Princess was again looking through the hole in the hedge.
"Are you still digging potatoes?" she asked.