From the
eBook “The Rainbow Cat” by Rose Fyleman
THERE was once a prince who was very
brave, good and handsome. He was quite young, too, and before he settled down
to learning how to rule the kingdom which would one day be his, he was sent by
his father out a-travelling into the world.
The king gave his son a beautiful white
horse and a bagful of big gold pieces, and told him to come back when the money
was all spent.
His mother made him a blue velvet mantle
embroidered with silver, and she also gave him a hat with a blue feather in it.
“I want my son to look nice when he goes
out riding into the world,” she said.
He rode away on his white horse and turned to wave his hand to his mother and
father
before he went over the hill-top.
before he went over the hill-top.
“How handsome he looks,” said his mother,
wiping away a tear or two.
“Well, that’s nothing to cry about,” said
his father, and blew his nose. Then they went back into the palace and
continued ruling.
The prince rode on and on.
Wherever he went people were very nice to
him, even when he got beyond the borders of his own kingdom where he was no
longer known.
It is not every day that a handsome prince
comes riding along on a white horse, and moreover with a bagful of fine gold
pieces to spend.
All the girls ran out to look at him as he
passed, and when he stayed anywhere, even for a short time, people seemed to
get to know about it at once and asked him to their houses and gave grand
parties in his honour and made so much of him altogether that he was in some
danger of getting thoroughly spoiled.
But he had been very well brought up, and
he had a naturally amiable disposition.
Besides, he had always been told by his
mother that if you are a prince you must try hard to behave as a prince should,
and be modest, considerate, and very polite to everyone.
One morning close on midday, he came to a
tiny village which he did not know at all.
He was rather hungry after his ride, and
as he passed down the narrow little street he became aware of a delicious smell
of new bread.
It came from the open door of the village
baker’s, and as he glanced in he saw a pile of beautiful, crisp new rolls
heaped up in a big white basket.
He got down off his horse and went in.
“I should like to buy one of those nice
little rolls,” he said to the baker’s daughter, who stood behind the counter.
She was very pretty. She had blue, shining
eyes and fair smooth hair, and when she smiled it was like sunshine on a
flowery meadow.
The prince ate up his roll and then
another and yet another, and while he ate he talked to the baker’s daughter.
But no one can eat more than three rolls one after another, and at last he felt
that the time had come to pay for what he had had and ride on his way.
But, as it happened, he had no small
change, nothing but a gold piece such as those which he had in his bag.
The baker’s daughter hadn’t enough money
in the whole shop to change such a big gold piece, her father having set off
that very morning with all the money in the till in order to buy a sack of
flour from the miller in the next village.
The Prince sampled the girls wares
She had never even seen so large a gold
coin before. She wanted to give him the rolls for nothing, but of course he
wouldn’t hear of that, and when he said it didn’t matter about the change she
wouldn’t hear of that either.
“Then there’s nothing for it,” said the
prince, “but for me to stay in the village until I have eaten as much as my
gold piece will pay for.”
As a matter of fact he was really quite
glad of an excuse to stay, the baker’s daughter was so very pretty, and he was
getting a little tired of travelling.
He pottered about in the bakehouse all the
afternoon and watched her making the dough for her delicious rolls.
He even offered to help her.
His blue mantle got rather floury, but he
didn’t mind that in the least.
The baker’s daughter was rather worried
that such a fine gentleman should get in such a mess.
She didn’t know he was a prince, otherwise
she might have been more worried still.
In the evening, when the baker returned,
the prince asked if he could put him up for a couple of nights.
The baker was a kindly and simple old
soul. “Gladly, gladly,” he said, rubbing his hands together and smiling, for
the village was a small one and they were very poor, and he was glad to make a
little extra money.
The prince stayed a whole week at the
baker’s house. By that time, what with the bread he had eaten—though he was
careful not to eat much and always to choose the cheapest—and the price of his
lodging, about half of the gold piece was spent, and the baker’s daughter was
able to give him the change from the money she had taken in the shop.
So he had no excuse for staying any
longer, which grieved him because he had grown very fond of the baker’s
daughter and did not like leaving her.
But he had an idea that his mother and
father would not think her a very suitable bride for him, for princes cannot
always marry whom they please, and so he rode sadly away.
But the farther he went the sadder he
became, and at the end of two months he could bear it no longer, and so one fine
morning he turned his horse’s head round and rode back again the way he had
come.
“She is good and clever and beautiful,” he
said. “What more can one want in a wife? When my mother and father see her they
will love her as much as I do and will be quite willing that I should marry
her.” Which really was very optimistic of him.
But alas, when he came to the village and
sought the baker’s shop, he was met by strange faces.
The baker had died a month since, he was
told, and his daughter had left the village and gone out into the world to work
for her living, for she could not manage the bakehouse by herself and there was
none to help her now that her father was gone.
The prince was very, very troubled and
unhappy. He tried to find out something more about her, but his efforts were
fruitless; no one seemed to know what had become of her.
“I will search the world over till I find
her,” he said, “even if it take me the whole of my life.”
He wandered on and on, always making fresh
inquiries, always hoping to hear something of his lost love, but always in
vain.
And at last he got back to his own
kingdom.
When his mother and father saw him they
were horrified to find how pale and thin he had grown.
“Travelling doesn’t seem to suit you, my
son,” said his father, looking at him rather seriously and stroking his beard.
“The poor boy is tired out,” said his
mother. “He’ll look better when he’s had a good rest and some proper food. I
don’t suppose he’s ever had a really wholesome meal in those foreign parts.”
But the prince remained thin and sad and
listless, and at last he told his father and mother the cause of his
unhappiness. At first they were a little upset at the idea of his wanting to
marry so humble a person as the daughter of a village baker—“But that of
course,” thought the prince, “is only because they don’t know her.”
And after a time, when they saw how
unhappy he was and that all the distractions with which they provided him were
unavailing, and that his one idea was to go out into the world again and search
for the baker’s daughter, they were so troubled that they felt they would be
only too glad if he could have the wish of his heart fulfilled.
And then one day as the prince was sitting
quietly at breakfast with his parents he jumped up suddenly with an expression
of the greatest excitement and joy.
“What is it, my son?” said his astonished
mother.
The prince couldn’t speak for a moment. For
one thing he was too excited, and for another his mouth was full of bread, and
I told you before how well brought up he was.
But he pointed to the dish of breakfast
rolls and kept on nodding his head and swallowing as hard as he could.
The king and queen thought at first that
sorrow had affected his brain, but the prince was able to explain very soon.
“The rolls, the rolls,” he said. “Her rolls, hers. No one else could
make them so good. She must be here.” And he rushed off to the kitchen without
further ado.
And there, sure enough, he found the
baker’s daughter, peeling potatoes over the sink.
By the merest chance she had taken a place
as kitchen-maid in the king’s palace, though she hadn’t the faintest idea, when
she did so, that the king’s son was the same person as the handsome stranger
who had once stayed in her father’s house.
And though she had been there a month she
had never seen him. How should she? King’s palaces are big places, and the
kitchen-maids stay in the kitchen premises, so that she and the prince might
never have come face to face at all if it had not happened that, owing to the
illness of the royal roll-maker, she had undertaken to make the breakfast rolls
that morning.
When the king and queen saw how sweet and
beautiful she was they made no objection to her as a bride for their son, and
so he asked her at once to marry him, which she consented to do, for she loved
him as much as he loved her.
“I don’t know that I should have chosen
a baker’s daughter for our son’s wife,” said the queen to her husband when they
talked it over that evening. “But she’s certainly a charming girl, and quite
nice people go into business nowadays.”
“She’ll make him an excellent wife,” said
the king. “Those rolls were delicious.”
So they got married quite soon after. The
wedding was a rather quiet one because the bride was in mourning for her
father, whom she had loved dearly. All the same, it was a very nice affair, and
everybody was most jolly and gay. The prince and his wife had a beautiful house
not very far from the palace, and I think it is extremely likely that they
lived happily ever after.
==================
THE
PRINCE AND THE BAKER’S DAUGHTER – A Free Story
From the eBook “The Rainbow Cat” by
Rose Fyleman
ISBN: 9788835349068
URL/DownLoad Link: http://bit.ly/2ScrFPj
==================
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