.

When the Head-nurse came into the tower-yard, the dog began to bark;
he was not used to seeing a woman with her face in the crown of her
bonnet. He thought that her head must be on the wrong way, and that
she was a monster, and had designs upon his master's property. So he
barked and growled, and caught hold of her dress, and the Head-nurse
screamed. The Baron himself came running downstairs, and opened the
door. "Who is there?" cried he.

But when he saw the woman with her bonnet on wrong he knew at once
that she must be one of the Princess's nurses. So he ordered off the
dog, and ushered the nurse into the tower. He led her into his study,
and asked her to sit down. "Now, madam, what can I do for you?" he
inquired quite politely.

"Oh, my lord!" cried the Head-nurse in her muffled voice, "help me to
find the Princess."

The Baron, who was a tall lean old man and wore a very large-figured
dressing-gown trimmed with fur, frowned, and struck his fist down upon
the table. "Help you to find the Princess!" he exclaimed; "don't you
suppose I should find her on my own account if I could? I should
have found her long before this if the idiots had not broken all my
bottles, and crystals, and retorts, and mirrors, and spilled all the
magic fluids, so that I cannot practice any white magic at all. The
idea of looking for a princess in a bottle--that comes of pinning
one's faith upon philosophy!"

"Then you cannot find the Princess by white magic?" the Head-nurse
asked timidly.

The Baron pounded the table again. "Of course I cannot," he replied,
"with all my magical utensils smashed in the search for her."

The Head-nurse sighed pitifully.

"I suppose that you do not like to go about with your face in the
crown of your bonnet?" the Baron remarked in a harsh voice.

The Head-nurse replied sadly that she did not.

"It doesn't seem to me that I should mind it much," said the Baron.

The Head-nurse looked at his grim old face through the peep-holes in
her bonnet-crown, and thought to herself that if she were no prettier
than he, she should not mind much either, but she said nothing.

Suddenly there was a knock at the tower-door.

"Excuse me a moment," said the Baron; "my housekeeper is deaf, and my
other servants have gone out." And he ran down the tower-stair, his
dressing-gown sweeping after him.

Presently he returned, and there was a young man with him. This young
man was as pretty as a girl, and he looked ve