nymphs, Wynde and Worta to help him--but all the really hard work he
had to do quite alone. Long days they were, for first there was so
much, much, digging to be done. All the patent soils had got mixed up,
and twisted and turned the King's spade as he tried to dig. He was not
accustomed to digging either, and disliked getting hot, and also
getting blisters on his kingly hands--but as he toiled on he thought of
the Princess and her lovely garden.

Day after day he worked and worked. He felt as if each little tiny
task took him years and years; and then he had to wait what seemed to
him an eternity before anything happened at all; and then another
eternity before the Princess would come and smile upon his garden.

"Will it _never_ be a garden?" he said at last. "Will you _never_ come
and smile on it, and shall I _never_ see your face again."

"Not to-day," she said.

At last, one day, after a long time, when his back was bowed with
digging and his hands horny with working, he suddenly stopped, for a
strange light seemed to be shining from the Palace steps behind him.

"Do not look round yet," said the Princess' soft voice. "Look straight
in front of you first."

He stood quite still, staring at what had been, until now, the backyard.

As he gazed there appeared before him paths of grass, green as emeralds
and sparkling with dew, and bordered on each side with shells that
glowed like mother-o'-pearl. Flowers, flowers everywhere, Canterbury
bells, and sunflowers, roses, lilies and lavender. Fruit trees of gold
and silver glittering in the sunshine, and behind, great dark leafy
trees inviting to shade and coolth. Fountains splashing, and birds
singing. He rubbed his eyes, thinking he must be dreaming.

Then he turned--and there, standing on the Palace steps, was the
Princess. No veil covered her face now. There she stood in all her
glorious golden beauty--smiling, radiant, as her name.

"You have your garden at last," she said.

Now this story might have been written about any garden, yours or mine.
For the honey bee still helps to grow the Canterbury bells, and the
birds still help to scatter seeds, and people still line their paths
with cockle shells, and sunflowers are still called "fair maids" in the
country. As for the Princess Mary Radiant--why, it's only in the
sunshine that the bells look like silver, and the cockle-shells like
mother-o'-pearl, and it's only to the sun that the sunflowers t