The Junior Classics, Volume 6: Old-Fashioned Tales
General
The Junior Classics, Volume 6: Old-Fashioned Tales
Children's literature
And it turned out exactly as Lady Harriet had predicted; for though
they were all asked to tea, in proper form, the very next Saturday,
when Major Graham showered torrents of sugar-plums on the table, while
the children scrambled to pick them up, and the sideboard almost broke
down afterwards under the weight of buns, cakes, cheese-cakes,
biscuits, fruit, and preserves, which were heaped upon each other--yet,
for years afterwards, Peter Grey, whenever he ate a particularly
enormous dinner, always observed, that he must make up for having once
been starved at Harry Graham's; and whenever any one of those little
boys or girls again happened to meet Harry or Laura, they were sure to
laugh and say, "When are you going to give us another
GRAND FEAST?"
THE STORY OF FAIRYFOOT
By Frances Browne
Once upon a time there stood far away in the west country a town
called Stumpinghame. It contained seven windmills, a royal palace, a
market place, and a prison, with every other convenience befitting the
capital of a kingdom. A capital city was Stumpinghame, and its
inhabitants thought it the only one in the world. It stood in the
midst of a great plain, which for three leagues round its walls was
covered with corn, flax, and orchards. Beyond that lay a great circle
of pasture land, seven leagues in breadth, and it was bounded on all
sides by a forest so thick and old, that no man in Stumpinghame knew
its extent.
Whether it was the nature of the place or the people, I cannot tell,
but great feet had been the fashion there time immemorial, and the
higher the family the larger were they. It was, therefore, the aim of
everybody above the degree of shepherds, and such-like rustics, to
swell out and enlarge their feet by way of gentility; and so
successful were they in these undertakings that, on a pinch,
respectable people's slippers would have served for panniers.
Stumpinghame had a king of its own, and his name was Stiffstep; his
family was very ancient and large-footed. His subjects called him Lord
of the World, and he made a speech to them every year concerning the
grandeur of his mighty empire. His queen, Hammerheel, was the greatest
beauty in Stumpinghame. Her majesty's shoe was not much less than a
fishing-boat; their six children promised to be quite as handsome, and
all went well till the birth of their seventh son.
For a long time nobody about the palace could understand what was the
matter--the ladies-in-waiting looked so astonished, and the king so
vexed; but at last it was whispered through the city that the queen's
seventh child had been born with such miserably small feet that they
resembled nothing ever seen or heard of in Stumpinghame, except the
feet of the fairies.
The chronicles furnished no example of such an affliction ever before
happening in the royal family.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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