Prince, "Do you play?" and he said, "Only a little;" and then they
walked around the room, and looked at all the instruments, to see if
there were any that the Prince could play on better than the rest. He
wished her to perform, but she urged him, and he soon saw a hand-organ,
and said he was pretty sure that he could play on that. So he tried,
and, sure enough, he could play very well, and the Princess sat down on
the floor by him, and he played for almost an hour and three quarters,
and they were both very much pleased. Then the Prince's arm got tired,
and he stopped and asked the Princess to tell him her history. She said
she was a little ashamed to tell him her story, because he might think
that she was not of as good descent as himself; but the Prince
insisting, she told him that her mother was a water-woman.

[Illustration]

"A mermaid, I suppose?" said the Prince.

"O no!" she cried, "none of those low things with fish-tails, but a real
princess of the ocean. She lived in a splendid palace at the bottom of
the sea, and fell in love with a prince of the earth, who left his
father's kingdom, and went down there and married her.

"I remember my father very well," continued the beautiful Princess. "He
was a fine, handsome man, but our climate never seemed to agree with
him. He could not smoke under the water, and he often used to have aches
which helped to make him unhappy. Before he died, he said that he would
give all the treasures of the ocean for a pipe and a piece of dry
flannel. When he left her, mother pined away, and soon died too, when I
was only about twelve years old. I was very lonely, but, as I was the
daughter of a water-princess and a land-prince, I could go where I
pleased, either on shore or in the water."

"Amphibious like?" said the Prince.

"I don't know anything about that," she replied; "but I used to like to
walk about on the sea-shore, for everything was so different from what I
had been accustomed to,--birds, you know, and all that sort of thing."

"O yes," said the Prince, "it must have been very different to you
indeed; but I was going to say to you, a little while ago, that you need
not think me above you, for I am half-brother to a gnome."

"O, I am glad to hear that," she said; "I was afraid you would make fun
of me."

"As if I could!" said the Prince, reproachfully.

So she went on with her story.

"One day, about a year ago, when I was quite grown up, I met some ladies
who