e old lady
was made to understand what was the desire of the king.

"Hooh!" exclaimed the old crone, leaping from her seat and dancing
about the room, "the dhrame's come true at last! Och, hullybaloo!
didn't I know that the pretty Paudeen wasn't born for the pig-stye!
Bedad, but he'll ruffle the gentles! Wont you, darlint?" and the old
woman fell upon her son's neck, smothering him with kisses, while the
poor youth could hardly keep his legs under the vigor of her maternal
caresses.

PART II.

In a few days after the interview of Puck and Paudeen in the hut of
the forester, there was great excitement at the court of Fairyland.
The fashionable milliners and dress-makers never had seen such a
time--orders from the aristocracy poured in upon them by scores, and
their doors were beset by fashionable carriages, and little fairy
footmen caparisoned in long coats with many capes, and broad, red
bands fastened with shining buckles round their hats. The great
_artistes_ who were at the head of these establishments saw themselves
amassing fortunes from the sudden influx of fashionable custom. But
the poor little fairy seamstresses, who sat up all night, sometimes
without time to eat or sleep, from sunset to sunset, so that all these
splendid dresses might be finished in time--they did not fare so well.
They grew pale and sick, and sat swaying and swinging about as they
worked, until one might have thought them the ghosts of fairy workers,
come back for a ghostly midnight frolic in their old haunts. It was
melancholy enough, truly; but then nobody knew any thing about it. The
rich ladies, when their splendid robes came home, did not stop to
think that good, earnest, faithful fairy hearts had embroidered the
roses that adorned the skirts from their own cheeks, and spangled them
with the broken fragments of their youth's faded dreams. If they had--

Well, and if they had?

That is not at all to the purport of my story; and so I will proceed
to let the reader into the secret of all this flutter and fluster. A
great prince had made his appearance at the court of Paterflor, and
had created almost as great an excitement in Fairyland as a new prima
donna with bright eyes and a _sfogato_ voice among mere mortals.
Nobody knew exactly who he was, but he came from a great way off, and
had a name as long as a province, and, beside being incalculably
wealthy, it was universally voted (ladies vote in Fairyland) that he
was the very han