But she said
nothing, only went into the bedchamber, took all the bedding off, and
put a pea on the flooring of the bedstead; then she took twenty
mattresses and laid them upon the pea, and then twenty eider-down beds
upon the mattresses. On this the princess had to lie all night. In the
morning she was asked how she had slept.

"Oh, miserably!" said the princess. "I scarcely closed my eyes all night
long. Goodness knows what was in my bed. I lay upon something hard, so
that I am black and blue all over. It is quite dreadful!"

Now they saw that she was a real princess, for through the twenty
mattresses and the twenty eider-down beds she had felt the pea. No one
but a real princess could be so delicate.

So the prince took her for his wife, for now he knew that he had a true
princess; and the pea was put in the museum, and it is there now, unless
somebody has carried it off.

Look you, this is a true story.

CHAPTER XXII

THE UGLY DUCKLING

It was so glorious out in the country; it was summer; the cornfields
were yellow, the oats were green, the hay had been put up in stacks in
the green meadows, and the stork went about on his long red legs, and
chattered Egyptian, for this was the language he had learned from his
good mother. All around the fields and meadows were great forests, and
in the midst of these forests lay deep lakes. Yes, it was right glorious
out in the country. In the midst of the sunshine there lay an old farm,
with deep canals about it, and from the wall down to the water grew
great burdocks, so high that little children could stand upright under
the loftiest of them. It was just as wild there as in the deepest wood,
and here sat a Duck upon her nest; she had to hatch her ducklings; but
she was almost tired out before the little ones came and then she so
seldom had visitors. The other ducks liked better to swim about in the
canals than to run up to sit down under a burdock, and cackle with her.

At last one egg-shell after another burst open. "Piep! piep!" it cried,
and in all the eggs there were little creatures that stuck out their
heads.

"Quack! quack!" they said; and they all came quacking out as fast as
they could, looking all round them under the green leaves; and the
mother let them look as much as they chose, for green is good for the
eye.

"How wide the world is!" said all the young ones, for they certainly had
much more room now than when they were in the eggs.

"D'ye