hand in hand before her and caught the glance of her beautiful witch's eyes, all sorts of muddles fell out of their heads, and they began to understand everything that had been puzzling them for years and years and years. That only shows what a witch can do when she is the right sort of witch!

"Dear little Princess," cried Kit, "it doesn't matter whether the other boys believe me or not, so long as you know I am not a coward."

"Besides," added Princess Winsome, "we are not going to try to make anybody believe anything. I think we'll stay here, instead, for ever and ever and always."

"A very good idea," smiled the Weird Witch of the Willow-Herb, as she nodded at them both. "Always remain enchanted if you can."

So they had the nicest and the funniest wedding possible, on the spot; and there was no time wasted in sending out invitations, for all the guests were already waiting there in rows—with the exception of the singing-birds; and Kit very soon summoned them by whistling a few notes of his wonderful tune. The Princess laid her own wedding-breakfast under the trees, and the wedding-guests helped her by bringing her everything that was nice to eat in the forest, such as roasted chestnuts and preserved fruits and truffles and barley-sugar-cane, and lots of dewdrops and honey-drops and pear-drops; and the Weird Witch completed the feast by turning a piece of rock that nobody wanted into a wedding-cake, and every one will agree that it is better for a rock to turn into a wedding-cake than for a wedding-cake to turn into a rock. And all the flowers came of their own accord and arranged themselves on the table, which they certainly did much more prettily than anybody else could have done it for them; and when the wedding was over they just walked away again instead of stopping until they were dead, which of course is what they would have done at any other wedding. And although the bride had lost her other shoe by the time she was ready to be married, and although her beautiful hair was more untidy than ever and her crown had tumbled off again and had to be brought to her by an obliging lion, Kit never noticed any of these things and only felt quite certain that he was marrying somebody who had come right out of Fairyland and was not an ordinary Princess at all. No doubt, it was because he was in an enchanted forest that he made such a mistake; and no doubt, it is because he has never been disenchanted since that he is making the same mistake to this day.

As for the Weird Witch of the Willow-Herb, she went back to her pink cottage on the top of the hill, so as to be ready to make the next person happy who came up the white winding path. But before she went, she took care that all the singing-birds should fly back to Kit's home and tell the other boys how brave he had been, which they did with the greatest pleasure imaginable. It is said that the story became slightly exaggerated; but when we know how much one little bird can tell, it is not difficult to imagine the kind of story that could be told by hundreds and hundreds of little birds.

The Magician's Tea-Party

Little King Wistful slipped through the palace gates and went out into his kingdom to look for something new. He was only eight years old, so he was not a very big King; but he had been King as long as he could remember, and he had been looking for something new the whole time. Now, his kingdom was entirely made of islands, and in the days when the old King and Queen were alive these islands were known as the Cheerful Isles. But King Wistful changed their name soon after he came to the throne, and insisted on their being called the Monotonous Isles. For, strange as it may sound, this little King of eight years old thought his kingdom was the dullest and the ugliest and the most wearisome place in the world, and nothing that his nurses or his councillors could do ever succeeded in making him laugh and play like other little boys.

"Only look at the stupid things!" muttered his Majesty impatiently, as he stood and surveyed his kingdom from the top of a small, grassy hillock. "Five round islands in a row; always five round islands in a row! If only some of them were square, it would be something!"

At the bottom of the hill was a wood, one of those pale-green baby woods, where the trees are young and slender and nothing grows very plentifully except the bracken and the heather. And as the King stood and felt sorry for himself at the top of the hill, out from the wood at the bottom of the hill came the sound of a little girl's voice, singing a quaint little song. And this was the song:—

"Sing-song! Don't be long!
Wistful, Wistful, come and play!
Sing-song! It's very wrong
To stay and stay and stay away!
The world is much too nice a place
To make you pull so long a face;
It's full of people being kind,
And full of flowers for you to find;
There's heaps of folks for you to tease
And all the naughtiness you please;
To sulk is surely waste of time
When all those trees are yours to climb!
Ting-a-ring! Make haste, King!
I've something really nice to say;
Ting-a-ring! A proper King
Would not make me sing all day!"

King Wistful thrilled all over with excitement. Was something really going to happen at last? He had hardly time to think, however, before the little singer came out of the wood into the open. She wore a clean white pinafore, and on her head was a large white sunbonnet, and under the sunbonnet were two of the brightest brown eyes the King had ever seen. He stepped down the hill towards her, wondering how anything so pretty and so merry could have come into his kingdom; and at the same instant the little girl saw the King and came running up the hill towards him, so it was not long before they stood together, hand in hand, half-way down the hillside.

"Where did you come from and who are you and how long have you been here?" asked the King, breathlessly.

"I am Eyebright, of course," answered the little girl, smiling; "and I've been here always."

"Who taught you to sing that song about me?" demanded the King.

"The magician," answered Eyebright; "and he told me to sing it every day until you came. But you have been a long time coming!"

"I'm very sorry," replied his Majesty, apologetically; "you see, the magician did not tell me to come. In fact, I don't even know who the magician is."

"Are you not the King, then?" asked Eyebright, opening her great brown eyes as wide as they would go.

The little King felt it was hardly necessary to answer this; but he set his heels together and took off his crown and made her the best bow he had learned at his dancing-class, just to show beyond any doubt that he was the King. Eyebright still looked a little doubtful.

"Then how is it that you do not know the magician?"