Through room after room,—­there seemed no end to the rooms, and each one more beautiful than the last,—­from garden to garden,—­some full of trees, some with beautiful lakes in them, some full of solid beds of flowers,—­they went, sometimes dancing, sometimes walking, sometimes, it seemed to the Little Sweetheart, floating.  Every hour there was some new beautiful thing to see, some new beautiful thing to do.  And the Prince never left her for more than a few minutes; and when he came back he brought her gifts and kissed her.  Gifts upon gifts he kept bringing, till the Little Sweetheart’s hands were so full she had to lay the things down on tables or window-sills, wherever she could find place for them,—­which was not easy, for all the rooms were so full of beautiful things that it was difficult to move about without knocking something down.

The hours flew by like minutes.  The sun came up high in the heavens, but nobody seemed tired; nobody stopped,—­dance, dance, whirl, whirl, song and laughter and ceaseless motion.  That was all that was to be seen or heard in this wonderful Court to which the Little Sweetheart had been brought.

Noon came, but nothing stopped.  Nobody left off dancing, and the musicians played faster than ever.

And so it was all the long afternoon and through the twilight; and as soon as it was really dark, all the rooms and the gardens and the lakes blazed out with millions of lamps, till it was lighter far than day; and the ladies’ dresses, as they danced back and forth, shone and sparkled like butterflies’ wings.

At last the lamps began, one by one, to go out, and by degrees a soft sort of light, like moonlight, settled down on the whole place; and the fine-dressed servants that had robed the Little Sweetheart in her white satin gown took it off, and put her to bed in a gold bedstead, with golden silk sheets.

“Oh,” thought the Little Sweetheart, “I shall never go to sleep in the world, and I’m sure I don’t want to!  I shall just keep my eyes open all night, and see what happens next.”

All the beautiful clothes she had taken off were laid on a sofa near the bed,—­the white satin dress at top, and the big pink satin slipper, with its huge pearl buckle, on the floor in plain sight.  “Where is the other?” thought the Little Sweetheart.  “I do believe I lost it off.  That’s the way they come to have so many odd ones.  But how queer!  I lost off the tight one!  But the big one was pinned to my foot,” she said, speaking out loud before she thought; “that was what kept it on.”

“You are talking in your sleep, my love,” said the Prince, who was close by her side, kissing her.

“Indeed, I am not asleep at all!  I haven’t shut my eyes,” said the Little Sweetheart.

And the next thing she knew it was broad daylight, the sun streaming into her room, and the air resounding in all directions with music and laughter, and flying steps of dancers, just as it had been yesterday.