that,” said Peregrine, “is something like a wedding present!”
So Peregrine and his Queen drove away from the palace in a crystal coach, and everyone threw rice and rose petals and satin slippers and waved their hands and their handkerchiefs and cried good wishes.
But nobody noticed that the new Queen of Ambergeldar took with her a rather untidy brown paper parcel, or that perched among the carvings on the coachman’s box sat a little red squirrel and a glossy black crow. And of course everyone thought that the royal bride and bridegroom would spend their honeymoon in one of the bridegroom’s many castles.
No one guessed that they spent it instead in a little log hut called “The Birches,” on the far side of the Forest of Faraway.
For the little hut was still standing in spite of the winter storms and snow. The moss was greener than ever, and primroses, windflowers and wild cherry brightened all the forest.
The Ordinary Princess, who had once been an ordinary kitchen maid and was now Queen Amethyst of Ambergeldar, wore Clorinda’s ragged dress, which she had most carefully mended, and cooked the brown trout that Peregrine—who was always Peregrine—caught in the forest streams for their dinner.
Mr. Pemberthy skipped among the branches, and Peter Aurelious cawed happily to himself from the roof of “The Birches.”
“Lavender’s blue,”
sang Peregrine, chopping firewood,
“Rosemary’s green,
”When I am King
“You shall be Queen.”
“And so I am!” said the Ordinary Princess.
THE END
So Peregrine and his Queen drove away from the palace in a crystal coach, and everyone threw rice and rose petals and satin slippers and waved their hands and their handkerchiefs and cried good wishes.
But nobody noticed that the new Queen of Ambergeldar took with her a rather untidy brown paper parcel, or that perched among the carvings on the coachman’s box sat a little red squirrel and a glossy black crow. And of course everyone thought that the royal bride and bridegroom would spend their honeymoon in one of the bridegroom’s many castles.
No one guessed that they spent it instead in a little log hut called “The Birches,” on the far side of the Forest of Faraway.
For the little hut was still standing in spite of the winter storms and snow. The moss was greener than ever, and primroses, windflowers and wild cherry brightened all the forest.
The Ordinary Princess, who had once been an ordinary kitchen maid and was now Queen Amethyst of Ambergeldar, wore Clorinda’s ragged dress, which she had most carefully mended, and cooked the brown trout that Peregrine—who was always Peregrine—caught in the forest streams for their dinner.
Mr. Pemberthy skipped among the branches, and Peter Aurelious cawed happily to himself from the roof of “The Birches.”
“Lavender’s blue,”
sang Peregrine, chopping firewood,
“Rosemary’s green,
”When I am King
“You shall be Queen.”
“And so I am!” said the Ordinary Princess.
THE END
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