"Oh!" exclaimed Eyebright, clasping her hands tight; "I had no idea it was like this."

Of course Eyebright knew no more about Wympland than she had learned in her geography lessons, and we all know how little geography books ever tell us about the really nice places in the world. So, although she knew as well as any other little girl that Wympland has no physical features and its inhabitants have no occupation, that its climate is dull and foggy and its government is a sleeping monarchy, she was not in the least prepared for what she did see.

"Well," said a voice somewhere near, "what do you think of it?"

Just in front of them a wymp was standing on his head, which is a wymp's favourite way of resting his legs. He seemed to expect an answer, so the King did his best to think of one that should be both polite and truthful. As a matter of fact, he did not think much of Wympland at all.

"It—it is rather full of fog, isn't it?" he began, a little nervously.

The wymp looked distinctly hurt; but before he had time to get angry Eyebright put things right in her quiet little way.

"I don't think it is yellow fog," she said; "it is more like dull sunshine."

The wymp fairly wympled when he heard this.

"You've hit it!" he cried in a delighted tone; "that's what it is really. It's the folks from the front of the sun who call it yellow fog; they're blinded by their own sunshine, they are. This is the back of the sun, you see, and the sunshine naturally loses a bit of its polish by the time it has worked through."

"I think I like bright sunshine best," observed the King.

"That is absurd!" said the wymp. "Why, you can't look at it without blinking, to begin with. In Wympland you get all the advantages of the sun and none of the drawbacks,—no sunblinds or sunstrokes or sunspots! You must be a stupid boy if you can't see that!"

"It is your fault, not mine," answered the King boldly; "you shouldn't have thrown dust in my eyes if you wanted me to see Wympland in the right light!"

The wymp turned several somersaults to show his amazement at the King's words, and finally stood thoughtfully on one leg.

"That's serious," he said. "We didn't know you'd ever come up here, or we shouldn't have done it. However, it can't be helped now, so you'd better go back again. It doesn't matter if you do see things wrong—at the front of the sun."

"But it does matter!" they both exclaimed; "and that's why we want you to take away the spell, please."

The wymp stood on his head again and shook it from side to side, which no one but a wymp could have done, considering the awkwardness of the position. "There's only one thing to be done," he said at last. "You must exchange eyes."

They stared at the wymp and then at each other. The little King began to think busily, but Eyebright spoke without thinking at all.

"Very well," she said. "How is it to be done?"

"Quite easy," answered the wymp, cheerfully. "All you've got to do is to wish with all your might to have the King's eyes instead of your own, and there you are!"

At that moment the King finished his thinking. "Stop!" he shouted. "If I take her eyes away, she will always see things wrong!"

But the King had spoken too late. Eyebright had already wished with all her might, and her eyes had turned as blue as deep water while his Majesty's were round and large and brown.

"What fun!" she cried, laughing happily. "Isn't it a nice change to have somebody else's eyes?"

The little King, however, was far too furious to listen to her.

"Stand up and let me knock you down!" he cried, shaking his fist at the wymp. "Look what you have done. She will see things wrong to the end of her days!"

"Don't be a foolish little boy," said the wymp, calmly. "Take her home and try to see things right yourself."

The King certainly did not take her home, nor himself either; but it is the truth that they both found themselves, the very next minute, standing on the top of the small green hillock and looking down at the kingdom of the Monotonous Isles.

"Hurrah!" shouted King Wistful, waving his crown joyfully. "What a beautiful kingdom I've got! Look how the sun glints on the cornfields, and see the great red and blue patches of flowers! Don't you think it is a beautiful kingdom?" he added, turning to the little girl in the sunbonnet.

Eyebright was distinctly puzzled. She thought she only saw five round islands in a row. But, of course, it was impossible that the King should be mistaken. So she looked once more over the kingdom of the Monotonous Isles and then back at the anxious face of the little King.

"Yes," she said softly, "it is, as you say, a beautiful kingdom." Then she ran down the hill and disappeared among the slender trees of the baby wood, and little King Wistful went home to bed.

There is a Queen now as well as a King of the Monotonous Isles. She has black hair and blue eyes, and she wears a crown instead of a sunbonnet, and she quite agrees with the King whenever he tells her how beautiful their kingdom is. And if this should seem remarkable to some people, it need only be remembered that the Queen sees everything with the King's eyes.

The Hundredth Princess

There was once a King who was so fond of hunting that all the rabbits in his kingdom were born with their hearts in their mouths. The King would have been extremely surprised to hear this, for, of course, he never hunted anything so small as a rabbit; but rabbits are foolish enough for anything, as all the world knows, and it is certain that the rabbits of the King's forest would never have had a happy moment to this day, if the Green Enchantress had not suddenly taken it into her head to try and bewitch the King.

Now, the Green Enchantress was very beautiful indeed. She sat all day long at the foot of an old lime-tree in the royal forest, and she was dressed all in green, and she had small white hands and great black eyes and quantities and quantities of dark red hair. Every animal in the forest, from the largest wild boar down to the smallest baby-rabbit, was a friend of hers; and it made her dreadfully unhappy when she saw them being killed just to amuse the King. So it was no wonder that she made up her mind, at last, to try and bewitch him; and the first time she tried was on a fine summer evening, when the royal party was riding home from the hunt.

It had been an exceedingly dull hunt that day, for the King had found nothing whatever to kill, and this made him so exceedingly irritable that his followers took care to keep a good way behind him as they rode along. That was how it happened that the King was riding quite alone, when a voice suddenly called out to him from the side of the road.

"Good-evening, King!" said the voice. "Have you had good sport to-day?"

The King pulled up his horse and looked round; and when he saw a wonderful-looking girl all dressed in green, sitting at the foot of an old lime-tree, he did not know quite what to say. He knew very little about girls, for he had spent all his life in killing things, but he had a sort of idea that the girl in green was not much like the princesses who came to court.

"I have had no sport at all," he said at last. "All the animals were hiding to-day."

"No doubt they were," said the Green Enchantress. "So would you be, if people came hunting you with great