or scooping up pieces which they rolled into balls
and threw at one another. The queen watched them for some time, and at
last she began to weep bitterly. One of her maidens ran and told the
king that the queen was weeping, and he came in a great hurry to see
what was the matter.

"'Just look at those children down there!' said the queen, sobbing and
pointing to them. 'Did you ever see anybody so happy? Why can't I have
mud to dabble in too, and why can't I take off my shoes and stockings,
and amuse myself like the children do, instead of being so dull and
stuck-up all day long?'

"'Because it isn't proper for queens to dabble in the mud,' said the
poor king in great perplexity, for he didn't at all like the idea of
his beautiful queen dabbling in the mud with the little ragged children.

"'That's just like you,' said the queen, beginning to cry faster than
ever,' you never do anything to please me. What's the good of being
proper? What's the good of being a queen at all?'

"This made the king very unhappy, and again he thought and thought, till
at last he hit upon a plan. He ordered a very large shallow bath of
white marble to be made in the palace-garden. Then he poured into it all
kinds of precious stones, and chips of sweet-smelling wood, besides a
thousand cartloads of rose-leaves and a thousand cartloads of orange
flowers. All these he ordered to be stirred up together with a great
ivory spoon, till they made a kind of wonderful mud, and then he had the
bath filled up with scented water.

"'Now then,' he said to the queen, when he had brought her down to look
at it, 'you may take off your shoes and stockings and paddle about in
this mud as much as you like.' You may imagine that this was a very
pleasant kind of mud to dabble in, and the queen and her ladies amused
themselves with it immensely for some time. But nothing could keep this
tiresome queen amused for long together, and in about a fortnight she
had grown quite tired of her wonderful bath. It seemed as if the king's
pains had been all thrown away. She grew cross and discontented again,
and her ladies began to say to each other, 'What will she wish for next,
I wonder? The king might as well try to drink up the sea as try to get
her all she wants.' At last, one day, when she and her ladies were
walking near the palace, they met a shepherdess driving a flock of sheep
up into the hills. The shepherdess looked so pretty and bright in her
red petticoat and