horrid spears and things!"

She was really laughing at him, but the King had no idea of it. He only looked at her more solemnly than before.

"What do you know about it?" he asked her.

"Perhaps I know more about this forest than you know about the whole of your kingdom," answered the Green Enchantress; and this time she laughed outright. But the King did not mind in the least.

"Perhaps you do," he said simply. "I never pretended to know much. I do not even know why you are laughing. Will you tell me?"

"I am laughing because you know so little," she answered mysteriously, "and because there is so much I could tell you if it pleased me."

"I have no doubt you could," replied the King. "Will it please you to tell me now?"

"I don't feel inclined to tell you now," said the Green Enchantress.

"How strange!" exclaimed the King. "If I had anything to tell, I should tell it at once; but then, I am not a girl. When will you tell me?"

"Next time you come," laughed the girl in green.

"Next time?" said the King. "Why should I come twice when once would do?"

She did not trouble to answer that at all; and when the King looked again at the old lime-tree, the girl in green had completely disappeared.

"Is there a witch in the forest?" he asked, when his followers came riding up to him.

"There is the Green Enchantress, your Majesty," answered the chief huntsman. "I have never seen her, but they say she is the most beautiful woman in the whole world."

"Indeed!" said the King, in surprise; and he went home and spent the whole of the evening in trying to remember what the girl in green had looked like. He had quite forgotten, however; so the very next morning he stole out of the palace long before any one was awake, and walked as fast as he could in the direction of the old lime-tree. The wild boars and the other animals were most surprised to see him there so early in the day, and they followed him in twos and threes to see what he was going to do. As for the King, he strode on over the dewy grass and never noticed them at all. And all the while the bracken on either side of him was alive with trembling little rabbits, all squeaking to one another, with their hearts in their mouths,—

"We shall certainly be killed if the King sees us!"

At last he came to the old lime-tree at the side of the road; and there sat the wonderful girl all dressed in green, with her dark red hair falling round her down to the ground. The King would have taken off his crown to her, if he had not come out without it; but he made her a low bow instead, and the Green Enchantress began to laugh.

"Dear me!" she said, "why have you come back again?"

"They told me you were the most beautiful woman in the world, so I came to see if it was true," said the King.

"And now you are here, do you think it is true?" asked the girl in green.

"I suppose so," said the King, doubtfully; "but I don't know much about girls. If you were a wild boar, now, or——"

"But I'm not a wild boar!" cried the Green Enchantress; and she was so angry at being compared to a wild boar that she promptly threw a spell over the King and tried to turn him into a wild boar. But the King went on being a king, just the same as before, and he had no idea that he was expected to be a wild boar at that very moment.

"When are you going to tell me all the things you know?" he asked her, smiling.

"I have forgotten what there was to tell," said the Green Enchantress, sulkily; and she got up and walked away among the trees. The King wondered what he had done to offend her, and he tried hard to remember whether he had ever offended any of the princesses who came to court; but as none of the princesses who came to court ever thought of showing their feelings, he would not have known if he had.

Meanwhile the Green Enchantress was feeling very cross indeed. "What is the use of being an enchantress if people refuse to be enchanted?" she grumbled; and she ran off as fast as she could to find her godfather, the magician Smilax, for nothing ever put her into such a good temper as a visit to her godfather. Now, Smilax was the most amiable magician the world has ever contained, and he lived in an ordinary little cottage with a green door and a white doorstep and a red chimney-pot, and he did not look like a magician at all. All the same, Smilax was by no means a stupid magician, as the rest of the story will show.

"What is the matter?" he asked, when his godchild ran in at the door. "Do you want me to teach you a new spell?"

"No, indeed!" cried the Green Enchantress. "I am tired of spells; I want something much better."

"Well, well," said the kind old magician, "let us hear what it is all about, and then we'll see what we can do."

It was impossible to go on being cross when any one was as good-tempered as Smilax; so his godchild climbed at once on to the arm of his chair, and sat there with her little white feet dangling, while she told him all about the King who would not turn into a wild boar. "Is it not hard," pouted the Green Enchantress, "that I cannot bewitch the King?"

"Some kings are easier to bewitch than others," remarked the magician, wisely. "Now, what is it you want me to do for you?"

"I want you to make me into a princess," said his godchild, promptly. "Then I can go to court and dance with the King! Only think of it!" And she pretended that the poker was the King and danced round the room with it, to show how she should behave when she got to court.

"That's easily done," said Smilax. "You shall go to court and dance with the King, if you like; and I will make you so fine a princess that the King will not be able to distinguish you from all the other princesses in the palace!"

"But I don't want to be like all the other princesses, godfather; I want to be a real princess," objected the Green Enchantress.

Smilax shook his head. "Then I cannot help you," he said. "Nobody can make a real princess,—not even the Fairy Queen herself. Real princesses make themselves, and that is a very different matter."

"Shall I never go to court, then?" asked his godchild, with tears in her eyes.

"Of course you shall!" said Smilax. "Can you not go to court without being a princess? There is a back door to the palace as well as a front one, and any ordinary person can get in at the back door. But you must give up all your witchcraft the moment you set foot in the palace, for it is impossible to be an ordinary person and a bewitching one at the same moment."

"I don't mind that," said his godchild. "If I cannot bewitch the King I do not want to be an enchantress any more. I will go to the palace this very minute!"

And so she did, and that was how it came about that there was a new scullery-maid at the palace; and, one fine morning, the King met her all among the vegetables, as he took his stroll in the garden after breakfast. It is extremely probable that the King would not have noticed her at all if she had not happened to be wearing a bright green handkerchief tied over her dark red hair. He felt sure that he had seen that bright green and that dark red somewhere before, so he stopped and looked at her.

"What are you doing?" he asked her, with a smile.

"I am picking beans for the King's dinner," answered the little scullery-maid.

"How extremely kind of you!" exclaimed the King, who had always supposed that the beans for his dinner picked themselves. "Will you let me look at them?"

She held out her basket, and the King peeped inside and found it full of bright scarlet flowers.

"Are those beans?" asked