vents he did not mean to let it trouble him.

"It is time you learned to be serious," continued the King, still more
solemnly.

"To be serious? What is that? Is it a new game?" asked Prince
Charming, eagerly.

"Hush!" whispered the Queen, anxiously. "It is what every one has to
be,--the Prime Minister, and the Head Cook, and everybody."

"Surely," laughed the little Prince, "if so many people are occupied in
being serious there is no need for me to bother about it!"

"You cannot even read," said the King, frowning.

"No; but my Professor can," said Prince Charming. "He can read the
longest words in the dictionary without taking breath. When any one in
the kingdom can read so beautifully as that, it would surely be
impolite to try to imitate him!"

"The poorest children in the kingdom know far more than you do," said
the King, who was rapidly losing patience.

"Then there are plenty of people to tell me everything I want to know,"
smiled the Prince. "What is the use of knowing just as much as
everybody else? There would be nothing left to talk about."

The King looked at the Queen in despair.

"It is not the boy's fault," said the Queen soothingly; "you see, the
fairies did not come to his christening."

"And the wymps did," sighed the King. "I suppose that is why we have a
stupid son without an idea in his head."

Prince Charming took off his crown and felt his head very carefully.

"What is an idea?" he asked. "And why have I no idea in my head? Have
you got one in your head, father?"

The King was so angry at being asked whether he had an idea in his
head, that he sent Prince Charming straight back to the nursery.
However, as that was where the Prince liked best to be, he laughed more
than ever and was not in the least bit ashamed of himself.

Now, Prince Charming was known to be so light-hearted and so careless,
that all the flowers and all the animals told him their secrets; for it
is always safe to tell a secret to some one who is not taken seriously
by other people. And the Prince, for his part, delighted in talking to
the flowers and the animals, because they never reminded him that he
was eleven years old, nor told him to stop laughing as all the other
people did, the people who were too clever to worry their heads about
flowers and animals at all. So the Prince soon jumped out of the
nursery window into his own little garden, where his name was written
several times in mustard and