“Hurrah!” cried the prince from the bed.  “If you’ve come round, princess, so have I. How’s the lake?”

“Brimful,” answered the nurse.

“Then we’re all happy.”

“That we are indeed!” answered the princess, sobbing.

And there was rejoicing all over the country that rainy day.  Even the babies forgot their past troubles, and danced and crowed amazingly.  And the king told stories, and the queen listened to them.  And he divided the money in his box, and she the honey in her pot, among all the children.  And there was such jubilation as was never heard of before.

Of course the prince and princess were betrothed at once.  But the princess had to learn to walk, before they could be married with any propriety.  And this was not so easy at her time of life, for she could walk no more than a baby.  She was always falling down and hurting herself.

“Is this the gravity you used to make so much of?” said she one day to the prince, as he raised her from the floor.  “For my part, I was a great deal more comfortable without it.”

“No, no, that’s not it.  This is it,” replied the prince, as he took her up, and carried her about like a baby, kissing her all the time.  “This is gravity.”

“That’s better,” said she.  “I don’t mind that so much.”

And she smiled the sweetest, loveliest smile in the prince’s face.  And she gave him one little kiss in return for all his; and he thought them overpaid, for he was beside himself with delight.  I fear she complained of her gravity more than once after this, notwithstanding.

It was a long time before she got reconciled to walking.  But the pain of learning it was quite counterbalanced by two things, either of which would have been sufficient consolation.  The first was, that the prince himself was her teacher; and the second, that she could tumble into the lake as often as she pleased.  Still, she preferred to have the prince jump in with her; and the splash they made before was nothing to the splash they made now.

The lake never sank again.  In process of time it wore the roof of the cavern quite through, and was twice as deep as before.

The only revenge the princess took upon her aunt was to tread pretty hard on her gouty toe the next time she saw her.  But she was sorry for it the very next day, when she heard that the water had undermined her house, and that it had fallen in the night, burying her in its ruins; whence no one ever ventured to dig up her body.  There she lies to this day.

So the prince and princess lived and were happy; and had crowns of gold, and clothes of cloth, and shoes of leather, and children of boys and girls, not one of whom was ever known, on the most critical occasion, to lose the smallest atom of his or her due proportion of gravity.

CHAPTER XXIV

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST