It was a princess who stood outside the gate.  But, mercy! how she looked, from the rain and the rough weather!  The water ran down from her hair and her clothes; it ran in at the points of her shoes, and out at the heels; and yet she declared that she was a real princess.

“Yes, we will soon find that out,” thought the old queen.  But she said nothing, only went into the bedchamber, took all the bedding off, and put a pea on the flooring of the bedstead; then she took twenty mattresses and laid them upon the pea, and then twenty eider-down beds upon the mattresses.  On this the princess had to lie all night.  In the morning she was asked how she had slept.

“Oh, miserably!” said the princess.  “I scarcely closed my eyes all night long.  Goodness knows what was in my bed.  I lay upon something hard, so that I am black and blue all over.  It is quite dreadful!”

Now they saw that she was a real princess, for through the twenty mattresses and the twenty eider-down beds she had felt the pea.  No one but a real princess could be so delicate.

So the prince took her for his wife, for now he knew that he had a true princess; and the pea was put in the museum, and it is there now, unless somebody has carried it off.

Look you, this is a true story.

CHAPTER XXII

THE UGLY DUCKLING

It was so glorious out in the country; it was summer; the cornfields were yellow, the oats were green, the hay had been put up in stacks in the green meadows, and the stork went about on his long red legs, and chattered Egyptian, for this was the language he had learned from his good mother.  All around the fields and meadows were great forests, and in the midst of these forests lay deep lakes.  Yes, it was right glorious out in the country.  In the midst of the sunshine there lay an old farm, with deep canals about it, and from the wall down to the water grew great burdocks, so high that little children could stand upright under the loftiest of them.  It was just as wild there as in the deepest wood, and here sat a Duck upon her nest; she had to hatch her ducklings; but she was almost tired out before the little ones came and then she so seldom had visitors.  The other ducks liked better to swim about in the canals than to run up to sit down under a burdock, and cackle with her.

At last one egg-shell after another burst open.  “Piep! piep!” it cried, and in all the eggs there were little creatures that stuck out their heads.

“Quack! quack!” they said; and they all came quacking out as fast as they could, looking all round them under the green leaves; and the mother let them look as much as they chose, for green is good for the eye.

“How wide the world is!” said all the young ones, for they certainly had much more room now than when they were in the eggs.

“D’ye think this is all the world?” said the mother.  “That stretches far across the other side of the garden, quite into the parson’s field; but I have never been there yet.  I hope you are all together,” and she stood up.  “No, I have not all.  The largest egg still lies there.  How long is that to last?  I am really tired of it.”  And she sat down again.