On a certain day--the last day of April it was--there was a good deal of excitement in the fairy palace under the hill. The reason of it was that a new fairy had come to live there. Perhaps you never heard of a baby fairy. I have read a good many stories about fairies that said nothing about any such thing. Now, you needn't try to be so bright about it and say that of course there must be baby fairies, or there could not be any grown-up fairies. That isn't so at all. Fairies are not like men about growing old and dying and other fairies taking their places. I have heard of a fairy funeral, but I can't imagine how it happened, and I think that the story about it must have been a mistake. If you have read this book as far as here, you know that most fairies are thousands of years old, and you know, too--for Naggeneen has told you--what is likely to become of them in the end. Still, there is no sort of doubt that now and then a new fairy is born, and there was one born on this day. He was the son of the King and the Queen, and you can guess well enough that a fairy prince is a person of some consequence.
"What will we do at all for a nurse for the baby?" said the Queen.
"It never would do for me to have the care of him at the first," said the Queen.
"Never a bit," said the King; "it would ruin him."
"Never a know I know, no more nor you," said the King, "but you know as well as I it would ruin him."
"Why can't I care for my own child?" said the Queen, "the same as a human mother does?"
"I dunno," said the King, "only we know you can't. We've never dared try, to see what would happen. He must have a human nurse. Maybe it's something to do with them things Naggeneen was always talking about our having no souls--"
"Don't be talking about Naggeneen," said the Queen, "and me not well at all." Then she was silent for a little while and then she went on talking about Naggeneen herself. "Are you sorry he left us?"
"I'm not sorry," said the King. "We've more peace without him. Though he was clever and he often told us the right thing to do and he might tell us the right thing to do now."
"Did he tell us the right thing to do when he told us to bring Terence here to learn the ways of men and to teach them to us?"