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The Dancing Shoes.

the seas and far away there is a fine country that neither you nor I, nor anybody else that we know, ever saw; but a very great king once reigned there who had no son at all, but had twelve most beautiful daughters. Now this king had no queen to help him to take care of all these twelve young ladies; and so you may well think that they gave him no little trouble. They slept in twelve beds, all in a row, in one room: and when they went to bed the king always went up, and shut and locked the door. But, for all this care that was taken of them, their shoes were every morning found to be quite worn through, as if they had been danced in all night; and yet nobody could find out how it happened, or where they could have been.

Then the king, you may be sure, was very angry at having to buy so many new shoes; and he made it known to all the land, that if anybody could find out where it 305