“Alas,” said the prince, “it is for her own happiness that I seek to have her like other people. For myself I would love her anyway. But yet, what am I to do--for she seems so different that she will never believe that I love her!” It was already late at night when the prince found himself in the neighbourhood of the palace, and being tired and travel-worn, he resolved to take shelter in the cup of some flower and wait until the palace revelries were done. Accordingly he entered the garden of an humble cottage and crept within the petals of a wild lily growing in the long, untended grass. He had hardly settled himself to sleep when he heard from the cottage the sound of bitter crying. Now this is a sound which no fairy will ever pass by or ever so much as hear about without trying to comfort, and at once Prince Hesperus rose and flew to the sill of an open lattice. He looked in on a poor room, with the meanest furnishings. On a comfortless bed lay the father of the house, ill and helpless. His wife sat by his side, and the children clung about her, crying with hunger and mingling their tears with her own. The man turned and looked at her, making a motion to speak, and Prince Hesperus flew into the room and alighted on the handle of a great spade, covered with earth, which stood in a corner. “Wife,” the man said, “I’ve brought you little but sorrow and hunger. I would have brought you more if I had had better. And now I see you starve.” “I am not _too_ hungry,” the wife said--but the children sobbed. Prince Hesperus waited not a moment. He flew into the night and away toward the palace, and missing the fairy ring where among old oaks the fairies were dancing, he reached the palace by an unfrequented path and entered a disused part of the palace garden. And there, in a corner which he had never visited, Prince Hesperus saw a marvellous mass of bloom and fruit--poppies and corn, beans and berries, green peas and sweet peas, pinks and potatoes, celery and white phlox, melons and cardinal flowers--all growing wonderfully together, as it were, hand in hand. And above them, in a moon-flower clinging to the wall, sat the Princess Romancia, rocking in the wind and brooding upon her garden. “Come!” cried Prince Hesperus. “There is a thing to do!” The princess looked at him a little fearfully, but he paid almost no attention to her, so absorbed he was in what he wished to have done. “Hard by is a family,” said the prince, “dying of hunger. Here is food. Hale in these idlers dancing in the light of the moon, and let us carry the family the means to stay alive.” Without a word the princess went with him, and they appeared together in the fairy ring and haled away the dancers. And when these understood the need, they all joined together, fairies, goblin musicians and all, and hurried away to the garden of the princess.