The Yellow Dwarf

THERE once lived a widowed Queen, who had one daughter. There had been several other children, you must know, but one by one they had died, until the beautiful Princess All-fair was the only child left.

Time passed on, and every day the maiden grew more and more lovely, and, to tell the truth, she not only grew lovelier, but she also became very vain indeed.

Well, by the time she reached the age of eighteen, All-fair was so charming that she had won the hearts of twenty noble kings, and they were all courting her at the same time.

But never a smile did they get from the fair Princess. There was not a man living, be he king or peasant, who was good enough to become her husband, she said.

So when the twenty kings heard this, nineteen of them took their hats at once, and set off in a body to search for brides who were a little less charming and a little easier to please.

But the twentieth man, the King of the Golden Mines, was so much in love with All-fair, that he stayed behind in the hope that she would change her mind.

“This will never do,” said the Queen one day. “Here am I getting quite old, and I want to see All-fair safely married and settled down before I die. I must go and visit the Desert Fairy, and see if she will give me some advice as to how I can manage my stubborn daughter.”

Now you must know that it was a very hard task indeed to reach the Desert Fairy, for she was guarded by two fierce and terrible lions. The only way to get past the animals was to throw them a huge cake made from crocodiles’ eggs, millet, and sugar candy.

So the Queen set to work, and with her own royal hands she prepared one of these cakes; then she placed it in a basket and set out for the home of the Desert Fairy.

Well, the day was hot, and the cake was heavy, and before long the Queen was lying fast asleep under a big tree.

Suddenly a terrible roar awakened her, and she looked round for her cake to throw to the angry lions, but to her horror it was gone.

“What is to become of me?” cried the poor Queen in terror, and she burst into tears.

“Hem! hem!” cried a small voice, and the Queen looked all around her to see who could be speaking.

At last she looked upward, and there, in the branches of the big orange tree overhead, sat a little yellow man. He was just half a yard high, and he was eating oranges as quickly as ever he could; in fact, he didn’t even stop eating while he spoke to the Queen, which, of course, was very rude.

“Ah, Queen!” he went on, “there is only one way by which you can escape the lions, and that is by letting me marry your daughter.”

The Queen was so surprised that she even stopped crying. The idea of that hideous little creature marrying her beautiful daughter was quite absurd, and she was just about to tell him so when again she heard the dreadful roaring of the lions. “Be quick and make up your mind!” cried the Yellow Dwarf. (He was called the Yellow Dwarf, you know, because he lived in the orange tree, and he had eaten so much of the fruit that his skin had become the same color.) “Just remember you have no cake to throw to the lions.”

So, to save her life, the Queen was forced to give her consent to a marriage between the Yellow Dwarf and her beautiful daughter.

No sooner did she agree to the match than she began to feel very drowsy, and the next minute the Queen found herself safely back in her own palace.

She was so filled with sadness at the thought of her promise to the dwarf that a fit of deep gloom settled upon her, and for weeks she never smiled.

The Princess was quite at a loss to know what had come over her mother; so in the end she, too, made up her mind to visit the Desert Fairy in the hope that she would be able to tell her what ailed the Queen.

Then All-fair set to work and made a cake from the crocodiles’ eggs, millet, and sugar candy, and when it was ready she started off for the Desert Fairy’s grotto.