it was the right christening party or not, but
just flew down and presented their gifts to the baby, one after
another, as fast as they could speak.

"I give you beauty," said one. "And I, thoughtfulness," said another.
"And I, wisdom," said a third. "And I, patience," said a fourth. "And
I, contentment," said a fifth; and so on, until all the gifts of
Fairyland had been given to the baby in the nurse's arms. Then, when
they had quite finished speaking, the poor, flurried little fairies
discovered that the baby was the daughter of a poor peasant and his
wife, while Prince Charming lived in quite another country, a very long
way off. It was a great calamity, no doubt, but nothing could be done,
for the fairies had no more gifts left; so they returned very sadly to
Fairyland, and hoped that the wymps would not find it out. Of course,
the wymps did find it out, for they had arranged the whole thing from
the very beginning. Still, the wymps are not nearly so bad as they
pretend to be; and when they had finished laughing over their joke they
did their best to make things right again by going in large numbers to
Prince Charming's christening. They behaved very noisily when they got
there; and they ate every bit of the christening cake and ended in
giving the baby Prince the only nice gift the wymps have the power to
give; and that is the nicest gift in the world, for it is called
Laughter. To be sure, there had never been such a topsy-turvey
christening party before; but all the guests enjoyed it thoroughly, and
that cannot be said of all the parties to which the fairies are
invited. The Fairy Queen could not help smiling when she heard what
happened. "Never mind!" she said. "Some day, Prince Charming shall
have all the gifts of Fairyland, too. Meanwhile, he has something far
better than we should have given him."

The peasant's daughter grew up as beautiful and as wise as all the
gifts of Fairyland could make her. Everything she did was as well done
as the cleverest people in the world, all put together, could have done
it; and everything she said was as wise as the contents of all the
books in the King's library. When she cooked the Sunday dinner, she
made it taste like a banquet of twenty courses; she had only to look at
the flowers in the garden, and they bloomed as luxuriantly as though
they had been brought straight from Fairyland. She helped all the
village people when they were in a difficulty, for he