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being very helpful,” said the Ordinary Princess severely, and she sat down on a tree stump and ate her strawberries.
    When she had finished them, she licked her fingers and went off to a deep pool nearby to wash the juice off her face and hands, and it was while she was drying her face on the least ragged corner of her apron that a cracked voice quite close to her said, “Good afternoon, child.”
    The Ordinary Princess jumped.
    She had not noticed anyone when she came down to the pool, and when she dried the wet out of her eyes, she jumped again, for she saw the oddest sight.
    Standing half in and half out of the water, at the other end of the pool, was the queerest old lady she had ever seen. She had long, greenish-gray hair, a long hooky nose, and a pair of very twinkling eyes. She leaned on a stick made out of a knobbly branch of coral and wore a cloak of something that looked like seaweed.

    “Speak up, child,” said the old lady. “Where are your manners?”
    “G-g-good afternoon, ma‘am,” said the Ordinary Princess. And because she had been nicely brought up, she made the old lady a curtsey.
    The old lady gave her a long look from her queer twinkling eyes, and then she said, “You are Amethyst, I suppose?”
    The Ordinary Princess jumped for the third time and looked a little alarmed. “Yes,” she said, “but how did you know?”
    “Good gracious, child,” said the old lady, seating herself on a lump of rock with the water up to her knees, “I ought to know. I’m one of your godmoth ers. I’m Crustacea.”
    She gave the Ordinary Princess another sharp look. “You’ve heard of me, I suppose?”
    “Oh yes,” said the Ordinary Princess. “I’ve heard of you. And if it hadn’t been for you, Godmama, I wouldn’t be here at this minute.”
    “Does that make you glad or sorry?” asked the old lady.
    “Glad!” said the Ordinary Princess promptly. “Though I ought to say,” she added truthfully, “that there have been times when I’ve wished I was a really proper kind of princess ... but not very often.”
    The old lady laughed a high cackling sort of laugh. “You’re a sensible child,” she said. “Come and sit beside me and tell me all about it.”
    So the Ordinary Princess told her the whole story and the Fairy Crustacea laughed and chuckled and wiped her twinkling eyes with the edge of her seaweedy cloak.
    “And now,” said the Ordinary Princess, “I would like some advice, Godmama. What do ordinary people do when their clothes wear out and they haven’t any more?”
    “Buy some new ones, child.”
    “But I haven’t any money.”
    “Then earn some. Go to work,” said the old lady.
    “Oh, work,” said the Ordinary Princess thoughtfully. “I’m not sure I should like that.”
    “Neither do most ordinary people—but they have to,” said the old fairy.
    “What sort of work? And where?”
    “Great barnacles!” exclaimed Crustacea, “how should I know? Use your head, child. Think for yourself. And as for where —well, look over there.”
    She pointed with her knobbly coral stick and the Ordinary Princess turned and looked.
    Beyond the pool the forest ended in a narrow strip of moorland, and between the tree trunks she saw a far distant view of roofs and walls and battlements glinting in the sun.
    “Why—there’s a town there,” she said.
    “Certainly there is a town there,” said her god-mother. “That is the city of Amber, the capital of Ambergeldar, and if I were you, I’d go there and get myself a job. Because one thing is certain,” said old Crustacea, “if you go about in those clothes much longer, they will simply fall to bits.”
    “I was thinking that myself just before I met you,” said the Ordinary Princess.
    “Then take my advice and go on thinking of it,” said Crustacea. “Because the more you think of it, the sooner you will see that there is nothing for it but to buy new ones. And to do that, one needs money. Shops make a point of it, I am