and
merry-go-rounds, enough to have turned your head entirely, had you been
there to see. As to the Prince, he was so delighted as even to forget
for a while both hunger and weariness, and walked about from sight to
sight, crying "Hurrah!" as the jugglers and rope-dancers performed their
curious and daring tricks.

At length he came to a booth in which an old woman was preparing over
her fire a kettle of steaming stew, which to the hungry Prince seemed to
send forth the most delicious odor of any stew he ever had known in his
life.

"Ah," he exclaimed eagerly, "that smells exceedingly savory, good
mother!"

"Ay," replied the old woman; "and truly it ought, for it has in it blue
pigeons, a fine fat cock, three wild hares, and every vegetable and
savory herb known in all Jolliland. Will you have a bowl?"

"Ay," said the Prince, "that I will; and let the bowl be a large one!"
he added, as he watched the old woman filling a goodly wooden basin with
the stew.

"There!" she exclaimed as she held it toward him, "there it is; and good
enough eating for a royal prince, if I do say it who made it. One silver
bit and 'tis yours, my fine young fellow!"

[Illustration]

"But," stammered the Prince, his mouth watering as the fragrant steam
reached his nostrils,--"but I have no silver bit. If you will only trust
me for it, I will pay you as soon as ever I find the Crushed Straw--"

He stopped speaking suddenly, for he saw that the woman was laughing at
him. She had snatched the basin of stew as it were from his very mouth;
and as she laughed loudly and shrilly, she pointed at the Prince with
her fat forefinger.

Drawn by the noise she was making, all the peasants flocked around,
crying out,--

"What is it, Mother Michael? What is the joke? Tell us, that we may
laugh too; for you know we must laugh. It is our duty to laugh."

"He wants to be trusted for a basin of broth," tittered the old dame,
"and he says that he will pay me when he finds the Crushed Strawberry
Wizard!"

At this all the peasants laughed in chorus till the very hills echoed.

"I don't see what you are laughing at," cried the poor Prince, hotly; "I
think you are very silly indeed."

"Of course we are!" answered the laughing peasants. "It is our duty to
be silly. If we cannot laugh at something, we laugh at nothing, since
this is Sillyburg, the merriest town in Jolliland."

[Illustration]

"But," asked the Prince, in vexation, "does nobody here kno