her smile; but King Grumbelo was not so well
satisfied.

It was not amusing to carry on a conversation entirely alone, and he
even began to wish secretly that the Lady Whimsical would not answer
all his questions by laughing at them. However, the Lady Whimsical
showed no signs of answering them in any other way, and at last the
King determined that he would make her speak to him just once, and
after that she might be as silent as she pleased. So, one morning,
when the dragon opened the apple-blossom gates to him as usual, he
strode up to Lady Whimsical with a resolute air.

"Lady Whimsical, I want you to come away with me and be my Queen," he
said.

She shook her head and smiled.

"Why not?" demanded King Grumbelo.

She smiled again.

"Why not?" shouted King Grumbelo at the very top of his voice.

When the Lady Whimsical shrugged her shoulders and merely smiled again,
the King lost his patience completely, which of course was an absurd
thing to do, considering that he had come all this way on purpose to
find some one who knew how to be silent.

"Will nothing induce you to speak just one word to me?" he exclaimed;
and then he ran right away from her mocking laughter, and did not even
wait to have the rose-leaf door banged in his face.

It was a very crestfallen King Grumbelo who knocked at the gates of
apple-blossom on the following morning. But no one was sitting on the
doorstep of the dainty little house of rose leaves; and King Grumbelo's
heart gave a great jump.

"Where is she?" he demanded of the dragon, who had followed him along
the path and was looking at him with his aggravating smile.

The dragon became reproachful.

"It is your fault," he complained. "I told you she never spoke; why
did n't you listen to me? You have driven her away now by your endless
questions; she has gone into her house of rose leaves, and the Wise
Woman of the Wood alone knows what will bring her out again."

King Grumbelo looked up at the dainty little house of rose leaves, and
thought he heard the sound of muffled laughter floating through the
open windows. He turned once more to the dragon.

"Where does the Wise Woman of the Wood live?" he asked. But the dragon
had curled himself up in the sun and was already half asleep.

"Don't ask so many questions," he mumbled sleepily; and King Grumbelo
strode angrily out of the garden. He mounted his horse and allowed it
to take him wherever it would, for he had no ide