lady-in-waiting. He glared at them savagely and roared:

"Wow! Wow! A nice lot you are! I put you in charge of my daughter and
not one of you has sense enough to know that the poor child needs a
little amusement! I have a good mind to have you all thrown into the
dungeon!"

"But, Your Majesty," quavered one poor old scholar, "I was not employed
as a buffoon but as a teacher of astrology!"

"And I," another said, "as a teacher of languages!"

"And I as a teacher of philosophy!"

"Silence!" roared the Tsar. "Between you all you have about killed my
poor child! Now I ask you: With all your learning doesn't one of you
know how to make a young girl laugh?"

Apparently not one of them did, for no one answered.

"Not even you?" the Tsar said, looking at the first lady-in-waiting.

"When you called me to Court," the first lady-in-waiting answered,
drawing herself up in a most refined manner, "you said you wished me to
teach your daughter etiquette. As you said nothing about amusement,
quite naturally I confined myself to the subject of behavior. If I do
say it myself, no one has ever been more devoted to duty than I. I am
constantly saying to her: 'That isn't the way a princess should act!' In
fact for years there has hardly been a moment in the day when I haven't
corrected her for something!"

"Poor child!" groaned the Tsar. "No wonder she wants a change! Oh, what
fools you all are in spite of your learning! Don't you know that a young
girl is a young girl even if she is a Princess!"

Well, the scholars weren't any more help to the Tsar than the
councilors, and finally in desperation he sent heralds through the land
to announce that to any one who could make the Princess laugh he would
give three bags of gold.

Three bags of gold don't grow on the bushes every day and instantly all
the youths and men and old men who had stories that their sweethearts
and their wives and their daughters laughed at hurried to the castle.

One by one they were admitted to the Princess's chamber. They entered
hopefully but when they saw the Tsar sitting at one side of the door
muttering, "Wow! Wow!" in his beard, and the old first lady-in-waiting
at the other side of the door watching them scornfully, and the Princess
herself in bed with her lovely hair spread out like a golden fan on the
pillow, they forgot their funny stories and hemmed and hawed and
stammered and had finally, one after another, to be turned out in
disgrace.

On