orner
to look at the Princess Alicia turning out the saucepan-full of broth,
for fear (as they were always getting into trouble) they should get
splashed and scalded. When the broth came tumbling out, steaming
beautifully, and smelling like a nosegay good to eat, they clapped their
hands. That made the baby clap his hands; and that, and his looking as if
he had a comic toothache, made all the Princes and Princesses laugh. So
the Princess Alicia said, "Laugh and be good, and after dinner we will
make him a nest on the floor in a corner, and he shall sit in his nest
and see a dance of eighteen cooks." That delighted the young Princes and
Princesses, and they ate up all the broth, and washed up all the plates
and dishes, and cleared away, and pushed the table into a corner, and
then they in their cooks' caps, and the Princess Alicia in the smothering
coarse apron that belonged to the cook that had run away with her own true
love that was the very tall but very tipsy soldier, danced a dance of
eighteen cooks before the angelic baby, who forgot his swelled face and
his black eye, and crowed with joy.

[Illustration: The Dance of the Eighteen Cooks]

And so then, once more the Princess Alicia saw King Watkins the First,
her father, standing in the doorway looking on, and he said: "What have
you been doing, Alicia?"

"Cooking and contriving, Papa."

"What else have you been doing, Alicia?"

"Keeping the children light-hearted, Papa."

"Where is the magic fish-bone, Alicia?"

"In my pocket, Papa."

"I thought you had lost it?"

"O, no, Papa."

"Or forgotten it?"

"No, indeed, Papa."

The King then sighed so heavily, and seemed so low-spirited, and sat down
so miserably, leaning his head upon his hand, and his elbow upon the
kitchen table pushed away in the corner, that the seventeen Princes and
Princesses crept softly out of the kitchen, and left him alone with the
Princess Alicia and the angelic baby.

"What is the matter, Papa?"

"I am dreadfully poor, my child."

"Have you no money at all, Papa?"

[Illustration: "What is the matter, Papa?"]

"None my child."

"Is there no way left of getting any, Papa?"

"No way," said the King. "I have tried very hard, and I have tried all
ways."

When she heard those last words, the Princess Alicia began to put her hand
into the pocket where she kept the magic fish-bone.

"Papa," said she, "when we have tried very hard, and tried all ways, we
must have done ou