“Wife,” the man said, “I’ve brought you little but sorrow and hunger. I would have brought you more if I had had better. And now I see you starve.”
“I am not too hungry,” the wife said—but the children sobbed.
Prince Hesperus waited not a moment. He flew into the night and away toward the palace, and missing the fairy ring where among old oaks the fairies were dancing, he reached the palace by an unfrequented path and entered a disused part of the palace garden. And there, in a corner which he had never visited, Prince Hesperus saw a marvellous mass of bloom and fruit—poppies and corn, beans and berries, green peas and sweet peas, pinks and potatoes, celery and white phlox, melons and cardinal flowers—all growing wonderfully together, as it were, hand in hand. And above them, in a moon-flower clinging to the wall, sat the Princess Romancia, rocking in the wind and brooding upon her garden.
“Come!” cried Prince Hesperus. “There is a thing to do!”
The princess looked at him a little fearfully, but he paid almost no attention to her, so absorbed he was in what he wished to have done.
“Hard by is a family,” said the prince, “dying of hunger. Here is food. Hale in these idlers dancing in the light of the moon, and let us carry the family the means to stay alive.”
Without a word the princess went with him, and they appeared together in the fairy ring and haled away the dancers. And when these understood the need, they all joined together, fairies, goblin musicians and all, and hurried away to the garden of the princess.
They wove a litter of sweet stems and into this they piled all the food of the princess’s tending. And when the queen would have had them send to the palace kitchen for supplies, the king, who was a wise fairy, would not permit it and commanded that all should be done as the prince wished. So when the garden was ravaged of its sweets, they all bore them away, and trooped to the cottage, and cast them on the threshold. And then they perched about the room, or hovered in the path of the moonlight to hear what should be said. And Prince Hesperus and Princess Romancia listened together upon the handle of the poor man’s spade.
At sight of the gifts the wife sprang up joyfully and cried out to her husband, and the children wakened with happy shouts.
“Here is food—food!” they cried. “Oh, it must be from the fairies.”