Free The Ordinary Princess by M. M. Kaye

of the time of year, the sun was very warm that day, and there was not a breeze stirring in the forest. Nurse Marta dozed.
    And so it happened that the Ordinary Princess, coming running round the tree trunk, tripped over Nurse Marta’s feet and fell right into her lap!
    “Help!” cried Nurse Marta, waking up very suddenly.
    “I am so sorry,” apologized the Ordinary Princess, picking herself up. “I didn’t know that anyone was—” She stopped rather quickly. “Why, Marta!” gasped the Ordinary Princess.
    “Mercy me! Your Highness...” gasped Nurse Marta. “Oh, Your Highness!”
    “Oh do hush, please!” begged the Ordinary Princess.
    But it was too late. “What’s all this about Highnesses?” asked Peregrine, who had been running after her. They had been playing tag.
    “Nothing,” said the Ordinary Princess hurriedly. “Nothing at all. I—I think this old woman has made a mistake,” and she frowned very hard at Nurse Marta.
    But her old nurse was far too excited and upset to take any notice of mere frowns.
    “Oh, Your Highness, wherever have you been!” she cried. And she caught the Ordinary Princess in her arms and kissed her and hugged and cried over her. “We thought you were lost! Oh, Princess Amy, how could you, my lamb? Your dress! It’s got holes in it—and no shoes on; you’ll catch your death of cold! What would your royal Mama say if she could see you now!”
    She went on and on, and the Ordinary Princess could do nothing to stop her, until at last she ran out of breath and sat down heavily among the tree roots and wrung her hands.
    By which time, of course, it was far too late to pretend anymore, and the Ordinary Princess patted Nurse Marta’s plump shoulder and said that she was quite all right and that if Nurse Marta would write down her address she would come and see her and explain everything.
    So when Nurse Marta had stopped panting, she gave the Ordinary Princess her address, and having promised faithfully not to breathe a word of the affair to anyone, she curtsied several times in an agitated sort of way and went off between the tree trunks still wringing her hands.
    After she had gone, there was a long silence.
    The Ordinary Princess was looking rather ashamed of herself, and Peregrine was frowning.
    Presently he said, frowning more than ever, “So you were a real princess all the time. Amy, you are a little fibber! And for two pins,” said Peregrine, “I’d give you a good hard spanking!”
    The Ordinary Princess stopped looking ashamed of herself and giggled instead.
    “You can’t spank a Royal Highness,” she said.
    “Can’t I!” said Peregrine, looking quite as if he could.
    But the Ordinary Princess tugged at his velvet sleeve with her little blackberry-stained hand and said, “But it’s not my fault, Perry! I can’t help being a princess. And anyway it doesn’t make any difference, does it?” she added anxiously.
    “No,” said Peregrine, and he smiled his nice smile. “It won’t make any difference to me. But what about you? You are a Royal Highness, and I ... I’m only a man-of-all-work.”
    “What does that matter? I should like you every bit as much if you’d turned out to be a—a coal heaver!” said the Ordinary Princess hotly. “So there!”
    “I’ll remember that when I’m a coal heaver,” promised Peregrine. “And now suppose you sit down and tell me how it is that a princess came to be a kitchen maid.”
    So they both sat down on the moss and the fallen leaves, and the Ordinary Princess told him all about everything, right from the very beginning. And he laughed such a lot that they quite forgot the time and had to run all the way back to the castle, for fear of being locked out when the gates were shut.
    “Good night, Prince Peregrine,” said the Ordinary Princess, slipping in at the back door.
    “Good night, kitchen maid,” called Peregrine.
    “Qwa!” said Peter Aurelious.
    Mr. Pemberthy said nothing at all, because he was