The Ordinary Princess Read Online Free PDF

yours. Come, my dear,” and straightening his crown, the King went merrily off to take a stroll in the kitchen gardens. He was a man of simple tastes, and his hobby was growing onions.
    That evening, before the banquet for His Royal Highness the Grand Duke Reginald of Rubarbary, the Queen paid a visit to the apartments of her youngest daughter.
    “Now please pay attention, Amy,” said the Queen, sitting down on the edge of the Ordinary Princess’s golden bed, “because this is very important. I particularly wish you to make a good impression on the Grand Duke, for if he should take a fancy to you, it will save your Papa and myself a great deal of trouble. And—er—expense,” added the Queen, thinking of the high cost of hiring dragons.
    “Yes, Mama,” said the Ordinary Princess.
    “So you will please put on your most becoming dress and your prettiest crown.”
    “Yes, Mama.”
    “And for goodness’ sake, child, don’t stand like that! Feet together, please. And remember to stand up straight and answer nicely when you are spoken to. And look as if you were enjoying yourself.”
    “Yes, Mama.”
    “Do please try and remember to keep your back to the light as much as possible. I have heard,” said the Queen hopefully, “that His Highness is a little shortsighted, and I can only trust that it is so. Always bear in mind that you are a princess of the royal house of Phanffaria, and even if you are not beautiful, try and look as though you were.”
    With which puzzling remark Her Majesty departed.
    But, alas, in spite of all her good advice, the evening was a failure from the start.
    His Royal Highness the Grand Duke of Rubarbary was not only pudgy and pompous but full of pride, and the Ordinary Princess took an immediate dislike to him from the moment he entered the room. All her royal Mama’s eyebrow signals and all her royal Papa’s whispers of “Amy, behave!” could not make her be more than stiffly polite to him. While as for the Grand Duke, all the best dresses and becoming crowns and shortsightedness in the world could not disguise from him the excessive ordinariness of the Ordinary Princess.
    “Good gracious!” said the Grand Duke in a very loud whisper to his guard, “I don’t believe the girl’s a princess at all. Who ever heard of a princess with hair that color? And her nose, Count Poffloff. Have you noticed her nose? Freckles—positively freckles! Shocking!”
    So the banquet was not a success, even though the Grand Duke Reginald ate a great deal and seemed, by the noise he made, to enjoy his food. The Ordinary Princess sat at his right hand, but she did not talk to him at all; firstly because she did not want to, and secondly because his mouth was always full, so he did not look as though he could have answered her if she had.
    After this, no one was in the least surprised to hear, when the banquet was over, the Grand Duke telling the King how sorry he was not to be able to stay a second day, but he had just remembered a promise he had made to visit the Baron Boris of Bigswigsburg and that he was afraid he would have to leave immediately after breakfast next morning.
    “I knew this was going to happen,” said the Prime Minister glumly as he went off to look up the price of hiring dragons.
     
     
    A week went past, and then one day, when the Ordinary Princess was playing by herself in the forest, she met a party of girls from the city of Phanff who had come to the forest to picnic and gather bluebells.
    The Ordinary Princess had taken off her shoes and stockings and tucked up her gown above her knees to keep it out of the damp moss, and no one would ever have suspected her of being a Royal Highness! The picnic party certainly did not, and as she was a friendly sort of person, in a few minutes they were all talking and laughing together as though they had known each other for years.
    They climbed trees and ran races and picked enough bluebells to fill every apron with flowers. But when the