have let him guess for a moment that she felt envious of him,
although this he was in no danger of doing, for he was so brimful of
happiness that he had no time to think about his sister at all. Truly,
it is worth while to be ten years old if one is a Prince! In the
evening there was a banquet of a hundred and twenty courses, which was
the exact number of months in the Prince's life; and the two children
sat at the head of the table between their royal parents, and managed
to keep awake until the moment arrived to cut the birthday cake.

That was when the catastrophe occurred. At the moment nobody suspected
that it was going to be a catastrophe at all. It seemed the most
fortunate thing in the world that the Prince's godmother, the Fairy
Zigzag, should manage to arrive just in time to drink her godson's
health. Most people would think that a catastrophe was far more likely
to have occurred if the King and Queen had forgotten to invite the
Fairy Zigzag. That only shows how little most of us know about fairy
godmothers. The truth is that the Fairy Zigzag was not like other
godmothers at all. She did not like banquets and she did not like
noise; and she would much sooner have sent her present by post. It
would never have done, however, to refuse the Queen's invitation, for
that is what no fairy godmother has ever been known to do; so she came
at the very last minute with a very bad grace, and she meant to go away
again as soon as she could.

Bang! What a noise she made as she came down the chimney in a cloud of
blue smoke! If she had not been quite so cross she would have arrived
through the window in her best chariot drawn by sea-gulls; but she was
determined to take as little trouble as possible over the matter, and
no one could take less trouble over anything than to come straight down
the chimney.

"Oh!" said every one with a little scream; and the Prince was so
startled that he cut an extremely crooked slice of cake. As soon as
the blue smoke cleared away, however, and he saw that it was his fairy
godmother, he recovered his good manners without any difficulty, and
walked across the room to greet her.

"I am delighted to see you, dear godmother," said Prince Perfection
with his best birthday smile, which he had been saving up all day on
purpose. "Would you like to have a piece of cake?"

His parents beamed with pleasure at the charming manners of Prince
Perfection; and the little Princess rubbed the