ied:

"Now, Stefan, tell me a story! Tell me a story!"

"Father," Mihailo would say, "you ought to make him keep quiet! He's
foolish and all he does is fill Militza's head with nonsense!"

This always made Militza very indignant and she would stamp her little
foot and say:

"He isn't foolish! He knows more than any one! And he can do more things
than any one else and he's the handsomest brother in the world!"

You see Militza loved Stefan dearly and when you love a person of course
you think that person is wonderful. But the father supposed that Mihailo
must be right for Mihailo studied in books. So he shook his head and
sighed every time he thought of Stefan.

Now the kingdom in which the three brothers lived was ruled over by a
great Tsar who had an only daughter. In disappointment that he had no
son, the Tsar was having his daughter brought up as though she were a
boy. He sent all over the world for tutors and teachers and had the poor
girl taught statecraft and law and philosophy and all the other things
that the heir to the throne ought to know.

The Princess because she was an obedient girl and because she loved her
father tried to spend all her time in study. But the dry old scholars
whom the Tsar employed as teachers were not amusing companions for a
young girl and the first lady-in-waiting who was in constant attendance
was scarcely any better for she, too, was old and thin and very prim.

If the poor little Princess between her geography lesson and her
arithmetic lesson would peep for a moment into a mirror, the first
lady-in-waiting would tap her arm reprovingly and say:

"My dear, vanity is not becoming in a princess!"

One day the little Princess lost her temper and answered sharply:

"But I'm a girl even if I am a princess and I love to look in mirrors
and I love to make myself pretty and I'd love to go to a ball every
night of my life and dance with handsome young men!"

"You talk like the daughter of a farmer!" the first lady-in-waiting
said.

Then the Princess, because she lost her temper still further, said
something she should not have said.

"I wish I were the daughter of a farmer!" she declared. "Then I could
wear pretty ribbons and go dancing and the boys would come courting me!
As it is I have to spend all my time with funny old men and silly old
women!"

Now even if her tutors and teachers were funny looking old men, even if
the first lady-in-waiting was a silly old woman, the P