FAIRYFOOT LOVED HER INA MOMENT, AND HE KNELT ON
ONE KNEE.]

Within a few minutes the whole palace was in an uproar of excitement.
Preparations were made to go to the fountain of the nightingales
immediately. Remembering what the birds had said about not wishing to be
disturbed, Fairyfoot asked the King to take only a small party. So no one
was to go but the King himself, the Princess, in a covered chair carried
by two bearers, the Lord High Chamberlain, two Maids of Honour, and
Fairyfoot.

Before morning they were on their way, and the day after they reached the
thicket of roses, and Fairyfoot pushed aside the branches and led the way
into the dell.

The Princess Goldenhair sat down upon the edge of the pool and put her
feet into it. In two minutes they began to look smaller. She bathed them
once, twice, three times, and, as the nightingales had said, they became
smaller and more beautiful than ever. As for the Princess herself, she
really could not be more beautiful than she had been; but the Lord High
Chamberlain, who had been an exceedingly ugly old gentleman, after
washing his face, became so young and handsome that the First Maid of
Honour immediately fell in love with him. Whereupon she washed her face,
and became so beautiful that he fell in love with her, and they were
engaged upon the spot.

The Princess could not find any words to tell Fairyfoot how grateful
she was and how happy. She could only look at him again and again with
her soft, radiant eyes, and again and again give him her hand that he
might kiss it.

She was so sweet and gentle that Fairyfoot could not bear the thought of
leaving her; and when the King begged him to return to the palace with
them and live there always, he was more glad than I can tell you. To be
near this lovely Princess, to be her friend, to love and serve her and
look at her every day, was such happiness that he wanted nothing more.
But first he wished to visit his father and mother and sisters and
brothers in Stumpinghame! so the King and Princess and their attendants
went with him to the pool where the red berries grew; and after he had
bathed his feet in the water they were so large that Stumpinghame
contained nothing like them, even the King's and Queen's seeming small in
comparison. And when, a few days later, he arrived at the Stumpinghame
Palace, attended in great state by the magnificent retinue with which the
father of the Princess Goldenhair had provided him, he w