isses are magic kisses.
Don't you remember how you cured the King and Queen of all the wounds
the hedge-pig made by rolling itself on to their faces in the night?'

'But she can't go kissing hedge-pigs,' said the Queen, 'it would be most
unsuitable. Besides it would hurt her.'

But the hedge-pig raised its little pointed face, and the Princess took
it up in her hands. She had long since learned how to do this without
hurting either herself or it. She looked in its little bright eyes.

'I would kiss you on every one of your thousand spears,' she said, 'to
give you what you wish.'

'Kiss me once,' it said, 'where my fur is soft. That is all I wish, and
enough to live and die for.'

She stooped her head and kissed it on its forehead where the fur is
soft, just where the prickles begin.

And instantly she was standing with her hands on a young man's shoulders
and her lips on a young man's face just where the hair begins and the
forehead leaves off. And all round his feet lay a pile of fallen arrows.

She drew back and looked at him.

'Erinaceus,' she said, 'you're different--from the baker's boy I mean.'

'When I was an invisible hedge-pig,' he said, 'I knew everything. Now I
have forgotten all that wisdom save only two things. One is that I am a
king's son. I was stolen away in infancy by an unprincipled baker, and I
am really the son of that usurping King whose face I rolled on in the
night. It is a painful thing to roll on your father's face when you are
all spiky, but I did it, Princess, for your sake, and for my father's
too. And now I will go to him and tell him all, and ask his
forgiveness.'

'You won't go away?' said the Princess. 'Ah! don't go away. What shall I
do without my hedge-pig?'

Erinaceus stood still, looking very handsome and like a prince.

'What is the other thing that you remember of your hedge-pig wisdom?'
asked the Queen curiously. And Erinaceus answered, not to her but to the
Princess:

'The other thing, Princess, is that I love you.'

'Isn't there a third thing, Erinaceus?' said the Princess, looking down.

'There is, but you must speak that, not I.'

'Oh,' said the Princess, a little disappointed, 'then you knew that I
loved you?'

'Hedge-pigs are very wise little beasts,' said Erinaceus, 'but I only
knew that when you told it me.'

'I--told you?'

'When you kissed my little pointed face, Princess,' said Erinaceus, 'I
knew then.'

'My goodness gracious me,' said the King