Mother's Nursery Tales
Copyright© 2024 by Katharine Pyle
The Frog Prince
There was once a king who had one only daughter, and her he loved as he loved the apple of his eye.
One day the Princess sat beside a fountain in the gardens, and played with a golden ball. She threw it up into the air and caught it again, and the ball shone and glittered in the sunshine so that she laughed aloud with pleasure. But presently as she caught at the ball she missed it, and it rolled across the grass and fell into the fountain. There it sank to the bottom. The Princess tried and tried to reach it, but she could not. Then she began to weep, and her tears dripped down into the fountain.
“Princess, Princess, why are you weeping?” asked a hoarse voice.
The Princess looked about her, and there was a great squat green frog sitting on the edge of the fountain.
“I am weeping, Froggie, because I have dropped my ball into the water and I cannot get it again,” answered the Princess.
“And what will you give me if I get it for you?”
“Anything in the world, dear Frog, except the ball itself.”
“I wish you to give me nothing, Princess,” said the frog. “But if I bring back your ball to you will you let me be your little playmate? Will you let me sit at your table, and eat from your plate, and drink from your mug, and sleep in your little bed?”
“Yes, yes,” cried the Princess. She was very willing to promise, for she did not believe the frog could ever leave the fountain, or come up the palace steps.
“Very well, then that is a promise,” said the frog, and at once he plunged into the fountain and brought back the ball to the Princess in his arms.
The little girl took the ball and ran away with it without even stopping to thank him.
That evening the child sat at supper with her father, and she ate from her golden plate, and drank from her golden mug, and she did not even give a thought to the frog down in the fountain.
Presently there came a knocking at the door, but it was so soft that no one heard it but the Princess. Then the knocking came again, and a hoarse voice cried, “King’s daughter, King’s daughter, let me in. Have you forgotten the promise you made me by the fountain?”
The Princess was frightened. She slipped down from her chair, and ran to the door, and opened it and looked out. There on the top-most step sat the great green frog.
When the Princess saw him she shut the door quickly, and came back to the table, and she was very pale.
“Who was that at the door?” asked the King.
“It was no one,” answered the Princess.
“But there was surely someone there,” said the King.
“It was only a great green frog from the fountain,” said the Princess. And then she told her father how she had dropped her ball into the fountain, and how the frog had brought it back to her, and of what she had promised him.
“What you have promised that you must perform,” said the King. “Open the door, my daughter, and let him in.”
Very unwillingly the child went back to the door and opened it; the frog hopped into the room. When she returned to the table, the frog hopped along close at her heels.
She sat down and began to eat. “King’s daughter, King’s daughter, set me upon the table that I too may eat from your golden plate,” said the frog.
The Princess would have refused, but she dared not because of what her father had said. She lifted the frog to the table, and there he ate from her plate, but she herself could touch nothing.
“I am thirsty,” said the frog. “Tilt your golden mug that I may drink from it.”
The Princess did as he bade her, but as she did so she could not help weeping so that her tears ran down into the milk.
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