g to describe them, and I think he had
better not try to draw them. He had better not. He can do a thousand
things I can't, but I don't think he could draw those toys. No man
could better make the princess herself than he could, though--leaning
with her back bowed into the back of the chair, her head hanging down,
and her hands in her lap, very miserable as she would say herself, not
even knowing what she would like, except it were to go out and get
thoroughly wet, and catch a particularly nice cold, and have to go to
bed and take gruel. The next moment after you see her sitting there,
her nurse goes out of the room.

Even that is a change, and the princess wakes up a little, and looks
about her. Then she tumbles off her chair and runs out of the door,
not the same door the nurse went out of, but one which opened at the
foot of a curious old stair of worm-eaten oak, which looked as if never
anyone had set foot upon it. She had once before been up six steps,
and that was sufficient reason, in such a day, for trying to find out
what was at the top of it.

Up and up she ran--such a long way it seemed to her!--until she came to
the top of the third flight. There she found the landing was the end
of a long passage. Into this she ran. It was full of doors on each
side. There were so many that she did not care to open any, but ran on
to the end, where she turned into another passage, also full of doors.
When she had turned twice more, and still saw doors and only doors
about her, she began to get frightened. It was so silent! And all
those doors must hide rooms with nobody in them! That was dreadful.
Also the rain made a great trampling noise on the roof. She turned and
started at full speed, her little footsteps echoing through the sounds
of the rain--back for the stairs and her safe nursery. So she thought,
but she had lost herself long ago. It doesn't follow that she was
lost, because she had lost herself, though.

She ran for some distance, turned several times, and then began to be
afraid. Very soon she was sure that she had lost the way back. Rooms
everywhere, and no stair! Her little heart beat as fast as her little
feet ran, and a lump of tears was growing in her throat. But she was
too eager and perhaps too frightened to cry for some time. At last her
hope failed her. Nothing but passages and doors everywhere! She threw
herself on the floor, and burst into a wailing cry broken by sobs.

She di