hob and it was singing, as the water bubbled, the merriest song that
the little Princess had ever heard. The table was set for tea. It was
a very plain tea, only white bread and butter, and honey, and milk;
but it made the Princess hungry to look at it. In front of the fire
stood a straight-backed chair and a little spinning wheel.

The Princess sat down to her tea. How pleasant the little house was,
she thought, and how unusually hungry she was!

At tea, in the castle, she often was not hungry and asked for food
that was not good for her, roasted peacock, and almond cakes, and plum
pudding. But here, in her own little house, she found that nothing was
quite so good as bread and butter, and her milk tasted as sweet as the
honey.

After tea the Princess sat down in the straightest chair, and although
she had never in her life touched a spinning wheel before, she began
to spin. _Whirr, whirr_, the wheel turned and sang, as fine white
thread grew from the bunch of linen floss. The fire danced, and the
tea kettle sang, and the spinning wheel whirred merrily. It was so
pleasant to have had such a nice tea and to be working in her own
little house that the Princess began to sing too. She sang like a
bird, and she had never known before that she could sing.

"I heard you singing, and I stopped."

The Princess turned and she saw a little boy of her own age standing
in the room. He had a very pleasant face, but he was dressed in ragged
clothes. His shirt was so full of holes that it scarcely covered his
back.

"What are you spinning?" he asked.

The Princess had not known, until that moment, what she was spinning,
but now she understood at once.

"I am spinning to make you a new shirt," she said.

"Oh, thank you!" said the little boy as he smiled down at her. The
Princess looked at him, wondering. She noticed that his eyes looked
very like those of her fairy-godmother.

Then she thought of something else.

"In the little house you will find a treasure," her fairy-godmother
had said.

She looked all about. There was no gold, or anything that she had
thought before was a treasure there. Then she listened to her heart
that was singing, too, now. That was it. Her fairy-godmother had given
her, in her little house, the treasure of a happy heart.

THE OLD HOUSE

Up there in the street was an old, old house.

All the other houses in the street were new, with large window panes
and smooth walls, but the old h