rincess should not
have said so. It hurt the feelings of the first lady-in-waiting and made
her angry and she ran off to the Tsar at once and complained most
bitterly.

"Is this my reward after all my years of loving service to your
daughter?" she asked. "It is true that I've grown old and thin looking
after her manners and now she calls me a silly old woman! And all the
learned wise men and scholars that you have gathered from the far
corners of the earth--she points her finger at them and calls them funny
old men!"

The fact is they were funny looking, most of them, but yet the first
lady-in-waiting was right: the Princess should not have said so.

"And think of her ingratitude to yourself, O Tsar!" the first
lady-in-waiting continued. "You plan to make her the heir to your throne
and yet she says she wishes she were a farmer's daughter so that she
could deck herself out in ribbons and have the boys come courting her! A
nice thing for a princess to say!"

The Tsar when he heard this fell into an awful rage. (The truth is
whatever temper the Princess had she inherited direct from her father.)

"Wow! Wow!" he roared, just that way. "Send the Princess to me at once.
I'll soon have her singing another tune!"

So the first lady-in-waiting sent the Princess to her father and as soon
as he saw her he began roaring again and saying:

"Wow! Wow! What do you mean--funny old men and silly old women?"

Now whenever the Tsar began roaring and saying, "Wow! Wow!" the Princess
always stiffened, and instead of being the sweet and obedient daughter
she usually was she became obstinate. Her pretty eyes would flash and
her soft pretty face would harden and people would whisper: "Mercy on
us, how much she looks like her father!"

"That's just what I mean!" the Princess said. "They're a lot of funny
old men and silly old women and I'm tired of them! I want to be amused!
I want to laugh!"

"Wow! Wow! Wow!" roared the Tsar. "A fine princess you are! Go straight
back to the schoolroom and behave yourself!"

So the little Princess marched out of the throne room holding her head
very high and looking so much like the Tsar that the first
lady-in-waiting was positively frightened.

The Princess went back to the schoolroom but she did not behave herself.
She was really very naughty. When the poor man who knew more than
anybody in the world about the influence of the stars upon the destinies
of nations came to give her a lesson, she