"I have been walking in my garden," she said, when she found the King and the Queen and all the courtiers waiting for her, in the ballroom.
"She is so fond of flowers, the sweet child," said the Queen, trying to hide that she had been seriously alarmed; for the guests were beginning to arrive, and it would never do for them to suspect that anything unusual was happening.
"That is all very well," grumbled the King, who was not fond of balls; "but we must have the garden brought into the house or something, if she wants to do those things. I have been standing at the open door in my court suit for half an hour."
The next morning the Princess set to work to find a dress in which she could dig potatoes. But none of her own were simple enough; and when she asked her maids of honor if they had any old clothes, they were quite offended, and said they had never had such a thing in their lives. So she called her little page, who was teaching the cat to stand on its head in the anteroom; and she promised him a real sword in a gold sheath if he would find her an old dress to wear. But the little page came back again, in an hour's time, and said there was not an old dress to be had in the palace.
"What am I to do?" said the Princess, who had never been thwarted in her life before. "How do dresses grow old, I wonder, and why has no one in the palace got an old dress that I can wear?"
"Please your Highness, I think it is because none of the ladies in the palace slide down the balusters," said the little page. "That is the way I tear my coats and make them old. But I have heard, your Highness, that there are some people outside the palace gates who wear old clothes sometimes, only his Majesty does not like us to mix with such people, and I do not know where they live, your Highness."
"Oh dear! oh dear!" sighed the Princess. "I wonder how long it would take to wear out my dress and make it old enough to dig potatoes in?"
The little page shook his head.
"I do not think it will ever be an old dress, please your Highness," he said; "but perhaps the White Witch of the Waterfall could help you to find one."
"Who is the White Witch of the Waterfall?" asked Princess Gyldea.