The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Light Princess and Other Fairy Stories, by
George MacDonald

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Title: The Light Princess and Other Fairy Stories

Author: George MacDonald

Release Date: July 12, 2006 [EBook #18811]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE LIGHT PRINCESS AND OTHER FAIRY STORIES

by George MacDonald

CONTENTS

THE LIGHT PRINCESS
THE GIANT'S HEART
THE GOLDEN KEY

THE LIGHT PRINCESS

I. WHAT! NO CHILDREN?

Once upon a time, so long ago that I have quite forgotten the date,
there lived a king and queen who had no children.

And the king said to himself, "All the queens of my acquaintance have
children, some three, some seven, and some as many as twelve; and my
queen has not one. I feel ill-used." So he made up his mind to be cross
with his wife about it. But she bore it all like a good patient queen
as she was. Then the king grew very cross indeed. But the queen
pretended to take it all as a joke, and a very good one too.

"Why don't you have any daughters, at least?" said he. "I don't say
_sons_; that might be too much to expect."

"I am sure, dear king, I am very sorry," said the queen.

"So you ought to be," retorted the king; "you are not going to make a
virtue of _that_, surely."

But he was not an ill-tempered king, and in any matter of less moment
would have let the queen have her own way with all his heart. This,
however, was an affair of state.

The queen smiled.

"You must have patience with a lady, you know, dear king," said she.

She was, indeed, a very nice queen, and heartily sorry that she could
not oblige the king immediately.

The king tried to have patience, but he succeeded very badly. It was
more than he deserved, therefore, when, at last, the queen gave him a
daughter--as lovely a little princess as ever cried.

II. WON'T I, JUST?

The day drew near when the infant must be christened. The king wrote
all the invitations with his own hand. Of course somebody was
forgotten.

Now it does not generally matter if somebody