tion in her ear.

"What should I like for a Christmas present?" said the queen. "A smile
and a kiss and a hug around the neck; these are the dearest gifts I
know."

But the prince was not satisfied with this answer. "Smiles and kisses
and hugs you can have every day," he said, "but think, mother, think,
if you could choose the thing you wanted most in all the world what
would you take?"

So the queen thought and thought, and at last she said:

"If I might take my choice of all the world I believe a little jar of
rosemary like that which bloomed in my mother's window when I was a
little girl would please me better than anything else."

The little prince was delighted to hear this, and as soon as he had
gone out of the queen's room he sent a servant to his father's
greenhouses to inquire for a rosemary plant.

But the servant came back with disappointing news. There were
carnation pinks in the king's greenhouses, and roses with golden
hearts, and lovely lilies; but there was no rosemary. Rosemary was a
common herb and grew, mostly, in country gardens, so the king's
gardeners said.

"Then go into the country for it," said the little prince. "No matter
where it grows, my mother must have it for a Christmas present."

So messengers went into the country here, there, and everywhere to
seek the plant, but each one came back with the same story to tell;
there was rosemary, enough and to spare, in the spring, but the frost
had been in the country and there was not a green sprig left to bring
to the little prince for his mother's Christmas present.

Two days before Christmas, however, news was brought that rosemary had
been found, a lovely green plant growing in a jar, right in the very
city where the prince himself lived.

"But where is it?" said he. "Why have you not brought it with you? Go
and get it at once."

"Well, as for that," said the servant who had found the plant, "there
is a little difficulty. The old woman to whom the rosemary belongs did
not want to sell it even though I offered her a handful of silver for
it."

"Then give her a purse of gold," said the little prince.

So a purse filled so full of gold that it could not hold another piece
was taken to the old woman; but presently it was brought back. She
would not sell her rosemary; no, not even for a purse of gold.

"Perhaps if your little highness would go yourself and ask her, she
might change her mind," said the prince's nurse. So the royal ca