His meditation was interrupted by a most awkward incident. In the excitement of the bestowal of gifts by the Human Beings, and in the confusion of the entrance of the thirteenth and uninvited Human Being, one of them all had been forgotten and had got himself shuffled well at the back of everyone. And now he came pressing forward in great embarrassment, to bring his gift. It was the day labourer, and several of the Human Beings drew hastily back as he approached the dais. But everyone fell still farther back in consternation when it was seen what he had brought. For on the delicate cobweb coverlet of the little princess’s bed, he cast a spadeful of earth. “It’s all I’ve got,” the man said, “or I’d brought a better.” The earth all but covered the little bed of the princess, and it was necessary to lift her from it, which the fairy queen did with her own hands, flashing a reproachful glance at her husband, the king. But when the party had trooped away for the dancing,--with the orchestra playing the way a Summer night would sound if it were to steep itself in music, so that it could only be heard and not seen,--then the king came quietly back to the christening chamber and ordered the spadeful of earth to be gathered up and put in a certain part of the palace garden. And so (the Human Beings having gone home at once and forgotten that they had been present), when the music lessened to silence and the fairies stole from note to note and at last drifted away as invisibly as the hours leave a dial, they passed, in the palace garden, a great corner of the rich black earth which the day labourer had brought to the princess. And it was ready for seed sowing. The Princess Romancia grew with the days and the years, and from the first it was easily to be seen that certainly she seemed different from everyone in the world. As a baby she began talking in her cradle without having been taught--not very plainly, to be sure, or so that anybody in particular excepting the fairy queen understood her--but still she talked. As a little girl she seemed always to be listening to things as if she understood them as well as she did people, or better. When she grew older, nobody knew quite how she differed, but everybody agreed that she seemed different. And this the princess knew better than anybody, and most of the time it made her hurt all over.