n and a small
room to cry in--"

"To cry in?" interrupted the magician. "Why, no one ever thinks of
crying in a castle in the air!"

"One never knows," answered the Princess, gravely. "Supposing I were
to prick my finger, what should I do if there was n't a room to cry in?
Then, there is a middling-sized room to be serious in; for there is
just a chance that I might want to be serious sometimes, and it would
be as well to have a room, in case."

"Perhaps it would," observed the magician, who had never listened so
attentively to a conversation in the whole of his long life. "What
else will you have in your castle?"

"I shall have lots of nice books that end happily," answered the
Princess; "and they shall be talking books, so that I need not read
them to find out what they are about. I shall have plenty of happy
thoughts in my castle, too, and lots of nice dreams piled up in heaps,
and--well, there is just one thing more."

"What is that?" asked the magician.

"Well, I think I should like to have a Prince in my castle, a nice
Prince, who would not want to be just dull and princely like all the
princes I have ever danced with, but a Prince who would like my castle
exactly as I have built it and would play with me all day long. That
would be something like a Prince, wouldn't it?"

"You could not possibly have a Prince," said the magician. "If you
allowed some one else even to look into your castle in the air, it
would vanish away like a puff of smoke. I have lived in my castle for
seven hundred and seventy-seven years, and I have never allowed any one
to put a foot in it."

"Is it so beautiful, then, your castle in the air?" asked the Princess,
wonderingly.

"I'm sure I don't know," said the absent-minded magician; "I don't
think I ever noticed. I came to live in it, because it was the only
place in which I could be left alone. That reminds me, that if you do
not go away at once I shall be obliged to become exceedingly angry with
you."

"By all means," said the Princess, who had the most charming manners in
the world; "but I should like to have my castle first."

"I have n't got it here," said the magician, looking about him vaguely.
"I know I saw it somewhere not long ago, but I can't remember what I
did with it. However, if you ask the people of Nonamia, they will be
able to tell you where it has gone. You will find that they are very
obliging."

"Will they not be surprised?" asked the Princes