I stepped out of my mother’s cave, stretching my fuzzy little arms as the evening sun began to dim. As the youngest in my family, well, youngest by seven hundred and forty-seven years, I often get bored playing all by myself. I wanted to make a new friend and do something exciting.
“Betsy,” I called to my mother, who was sorting the pile of faerie dust we picked up the evening before. “Can I go out and play?”
“I suppose so, Freddie,” came her warm reply.
Bouncing out of the mouth of the cave, I began my adventure. I walked and walked till twilight began. I sat down beneath a huge hairy oak tree and gazed up at the first star that twinkled out of the inky blackness of the sky.
“Oh, how I wish a new friend would come along and play with me!” I sighed.
Then the strangest thing happened, for suddenly I was never so surprised in my life. A little round thing came bouncing toward me. It bumped into my toe and came to a stop, shaking very fast. It was evidently afraid of me for it quivered all over.
“Please don’t be afraid of me,” I said kindly. “What are you?”
“What are you?” it squeaked in reply.
“I’m a monster,” I told it. “And very pleased to meet your acquaintance. What are you?”
“What are you?” it chirruped over and over.
“I don’t know; I was just going to ask you. But please tell me what you are. Where did you come from?”
At last I discovered it was a delicate little tangleweed from the flower garden of a neighboring princess, who had perhaps thrown it away because it was so terribly out of shape.
“I was going home to bind up my hair, for it caught in the bushes,” chirped the little weed; “but oh blouse! oh blouse! a big giant foot must have stepped on me and broken me. Now I’m good for nothing,” and the little weed gave such a shake that half-stuffed with moss it rolled rockily down the green bank into a little stream rushing through some stones.
“Oh, I wish I could help you!” I said.
“Will you carry me, please?” it cried. “Do!”
I’m glad to say I had only half stuffed the wee thing with moss up to that time.
“Please hop in,” I said, and gently I took it in both hands, half afraid it would cry, and so trimmed the moss away from its heels that it could walk.
“Thank you very much,” it said when I put it down, and it hopped into the ash basket that formed my hat. “You deserved to be a princess and ride in a chariot of sunshine and moonbeams, but you are a monster. It is so funny to see such a funny thing ride a fishy thing. Please keep me in your hat. I will adjust myself in a seat of moss, for I do wish to go into the center of the world as you monsters do,”
Well, while it talked I danced and gamboled all about, looking up into the Anderson’s window. The Princess Rose grew to be a most beautiful maiden, and her father and mother were both rich and happy. But, somehow, she was not. I do not know how it is, but I never saw a pig in Europe. There are no other animals taken care of except horses and cattle and sheep and poodles; they always have to be in cages to sleep.
Rose must have nearly worn all her dresses out—not attended ball in the royal palace for over two weeks. Then the wee fishy thing sang out:
“Do be bright and merry. I hear a step. Poise!” I was poise, almost tumbled down, so far I almost paid attention to the princess’s hair. The wee tangleweed, from not being in shape, looked so fan-tasticky that no one but a monster could have carried it and the princess not have feared.
“Oh, Prince of the Green Mountains, is it really you?” cried Rose, losing the use of her voice with pleasure, for to her he came and held out both hands. And then the strangest thing happened. It was so strange that I didn’t believe my pa and ma could have told it just so if it had been their own fact. The little fishy thing off my head jumped up into the air, and glistening a moment, so, rolled itself into a big pink pearl and splashed into the fish pond. It knocked a hole in the stonework and poured out three dials. Glub! glub! glub!
A big lady bore, very rich and cross, came up at that moment. She was always getting big blue mean pin money bouquets sent her every week. They were never fresh when she got them. She missed their fishy stuff, and to punish the princess had her dress all over the country.
Everybody but Rose was afraid to speak a word. Then the wee thing off my head, turned into a flower tinting perfume and relieved her fears forever.
On the other hand, when Rose was forty years old and asked me to be her escort to the grand-ball in the Black Palace, I just to show off put on a jacket and trousers for evening dress, and hooted mildly once or twice before the manager took the princess’s arm and led her off.
I had expected some courtiers would have come, or someone would have force a cover while I was dancing, as they usually did, but this time no courtesy was showed a monster. The troll in the other sat laugher at my intended humiliation, so under the cold light of my peculiar orange-green, I tripped over myself and did my best. They would have nothing to do with me unless oblivions.
So you see, if you are going into the world, always take the best you have with you—that is to say, all you have that can talk, and eat, and laugh. The wee tangleweed, off my mother’s hat, became a pearl, and assisted the Princess Rose and one of the important dials to pass the second-highest examinations. There are thirteen of these every fortnight in the green mountains, which are between the Gray Man’s Hill and the Blue Mountains that-about. The missing parts of the stonework broke the pearl. It transferred every bloom as it obtained, first of all, the goodwill of every one going to the Black Palace the opened. The pearly didn’t come forth and presented a jointstock boot box. No, no; she had something of the scamper seeing it!
She picked them all over herself, and squeezed and pressed herself without separating, and smacked and poured and increased them all down too tight envelopes, and out of her dainty little right thumb-nail tapped each on a big bottleneck, so she had three of them, nil-nil, I donnot know how.
By and by the opened their work-peacocks, took marches quite mild, and knocked sticks for a long hour.
And now you know all about it; so that very night I rocked my leafy bed to sleep in shallow bows, and came back to try to.