most fortunate,” said the king.

“The boots, now I come to think of it, are unimportant, at least for the present.  Perhaps we can borrow a pair from the theatre.”

“As for the glass,” said the optician, “if your Majesty will allow me to take it home with me—”

“I am afraid I cannot part with it,” said the king; “but that, too, is unimportant, or not very pressing.”

Then he called for a servant, to order luncheon for the shopkeepers, and paper for them to write their orders on.  But no one was within hearing, and in that very old part of the palace there were no bells.

“Just pardon me for an instant, while I run downstairs,” said his Majesty; “and, it seems a strange thing to ask, but may I advise you

not to sit down on that carpet?  I have a reason for it.”

In fact, he was afraid that someone might sit down on it, and wish he was somewhere else, and be carried away, as was the nature of the carpet.

King Prigio was not absent a minute, for he met William on the stairs; but when he came back, there was not one single person in the turret-room!

“Where on earth are they?” cried the king, rushing through all the rooms in that part of the castle.  He shouted for them, and looked everywhere; but there was not a trace of tailor, hatter, optician, swordmaker, upholsterer.

The king hastened to a window over the gate, and saw the sentinels on duty.

“Hi!” he called.

And the sentinels turned round, looked up, and saluted.

“Have you seen anyone go out?” he cried.

“No one, sire,” answered the soldiers.

The king, who began to guess what had happened, hurried back to the turret-room.

There were all the tradesmen with parcels under their arms.

“What means this, gentlemen?” said his Majesty, severely.  “For what reason did you leave the room without my permission?”

They all knelt down, humbly imploring his compassion.

“Get up, you donkeys!” said the king, forgetting his politeness.  “Get up, and tell me where you have been hiding yourselves.”

The hatter came forward, and said:

“Sire, you will not believe me; indeed, I can scarcely believe it myself!”

“Nor none of us can’t,” said the swordmaker.  “We have been home, and brought the articles.  All orders executed with punctuality

and dispatch,” he added, quoting his own advertisement without thinking of it.

On this the swordmaker took out and exhibited the Andrea Ferrara blade, which was exactly like the Sword of Sharpness.

The upholsterer undid his parcel, and there was a Persian rug, which no one could tell from the magical carpet.

The hatter was fumbling with the string of his parcel, when he suddenly remembered, what the king in his astonishment had not noticed, that he had a cap on himself.  He pulled it off in a hurry, and the king at once saw that it was his Wishing Cap, and understood all about the affair.  The hatter, in his absence, had tried on the Wishing Cap, and had wished that he himself and his friends were all at home and back again with their wares at the palace.  And what he wished happened, of course, as was natural.  In a moment the king saw how much talk

this business would produce in the country, and he decided on the best way to stop it.

Seizing the Wishing Cap, he put it on, wished all the tradesmen, including the shoemaker, back in the town at their shops, and also wished that none of them should remember anything about the whole affair.

In a moment he was alone in the turret-room.  As for the shopkeepers, they had a kind of idea that they had dreamed something odd; but, as it went no further, of course they did not talk about it, and nobody was any the wiser.

“Owl that I am!” said King Prigio to himself.  “I might have better wished for a complete set of sham fairy things which would not work.  It would have saved a great deal of trouble; but I am so much out of the habit of using the cap, that I never thought of it.  However, what I have got will do very well.”

Then, putting on the Cap of Darkness, that

nobody might see him, he carried all the real fairy articles away, except the Seven-league Boots, to his own room, where he locked them up, leaving in their place the sham Wishing Cap, the sham Cap of Darkness, the sham Sword of Sharpness, and the carpet which was not a magic carpet at all.

His idea was, of course, that Ricardo would start on an expedition confiding in his fairy things, and he would find that they did not act.  Then he would be left to his own cleverness and courage to get him out of the scrape.  That would teach him, thought the king, to depend on himself, and to set a proper value on cleverness and learning, and minding his book.

Of course he might have locked the things up, and forbidden Ricardo to touch them, but that might have seemed harsh.  And, as you may easily imagine, with all the powers at his

command, the king fancied he could easily rescue Ricardo from any very serious danger at the hands of giants or magicians or monsters.  He only wanted to give him a fright or two, and make him respect the judgment of older and wiser people than himself.

CHAPTER IV.
Two Lectures.

For several days Prince Ricardo minded his books, and, according to his tutors, made considerable progress in polite learning.  Perhaps he ought not to be praised too highly for this, because, in fact, he saw no means of distinguishing himself by adventures just at that time.  Every morning he would climb the turret and sweep the horizon, and even much beyond the horizon, with the ivory spy-glass.  But look as he would, he saw no monsters preying on

human-kind anywhere, nor princesses in distress.  To be sure he saw plenty of poor people in distress, and, being a good-hearted, though careless, lad, Dick would occasionally fly off with the Purse of Fortunatus in his pocket, and give them as much money as they needed—it cost him nothing.  But this was not the kind of adventure which he enjoyed.  Dragons for his money!

One day the Princess Jaqueline took a curious plan of showing Ricardo how little interest, after all, there is in performing the most wonderful exploits without any real difficulty or danger.  They were drifting before a light breeze on a hill lake; Ricardo was fishing, and Jaqueline was sculling a stroke now and then, just to keep the boat right with the wind.  Ricardo had very bad sport, when suddenly the trout began to rise all over the lake.  Dick got excited, and stumbled about the boat from stern

to bow, tripping over Jaqueline’s feet, and nearly upsetting the vessel in his hurry to throw his flies over every trout he saw feeding.