The king’s library was a room as wide as a lawn and as high as a tree, and it was filled with books, and the shelves were thrown out to make alcoves, so that the books were as thick as leaves on branches, and the whole room was pleasant, like something good to do. It was impossible for little Hazen, furnace boy though he was, to be in that great place of books without taking one down. So he took at random a big leather book with a picture on the cover, and he went toward a deep window-seat. Nothing could have exceeded his surprise and terror when he perceived the window-seat to be occupied. And nothing could have exceeded his wonder and delight when he saw who occupied it. She was a little girl of barely his own age, and her lovely waving hair fell over her soft blue gown from which her little blue slippers were peeping. She, too, had a great book in her arms, and over the top of this she was looking straight at Hazen in extreme disapproval. “Will you have the goodness,” she said--speaking very slowly and most _freezing_ cold--“to ’splain what you are doing in my father’s library?” At these words Hazen’s little knees should have shaken, for he understood that this was the Princess Vista herself. But instead, he was so possessed by the beauty and charm of the little princess that there was no room for fear. Though he had never in his life been taught to bow, yet the blood of his father the king, and of _his_ father the king, and of _his_ father the king, and so on, over and over, stirred in him and he bowed like the prince he was-but-didn’t-know-it. “Oh, princess,” he said, “I want to be wise and _really_ good and loved and beautiful, and I have come to the king’s library to find out how to do it.” “Who are you, that want so many ’surd things?” asked the princess, curiously. “I am the furnace boy,” said the poor prince, “and my other name is Hazen.” At this the princess laughed aloud--for when he had bowed she had fancied that he might be at least the servant to some nobleman at the court, too poor to keep his foot-page in livery. “The furnace boy indeed!” she cried. “And handling my father’s books. If you had what you ’serve, you’d be put in pwison.” At that Hazen bowed again very sadly, and was about to put back his book when footsteps sounded in the hall, and nursery governesses and chamberlains and foot-pages and lackeys and many whose names are as dust came running down the stairs, all looking for the princess. And the princess, who was not frightened, was suddenly sorry for little Hazen, who was. “Listen,” she said, “you bow so nicely that you may hide in that alcove and I will not tell them that you are there. But don’t you come here to-morrow morning when I come to read my book, or I can’t tell _what_ will happen.” Hazen had just time to slip in the alcove when all the nursery governesses, chamberlains, foot-pages, and those whose names are as dust burst in the room. “I was just coming,” said the princess, haughtily.