Page:The Floating Prince - Frank R Stockton.djvu/187

172 "If there is a lunatic asylum in the country big enough, that giant ought to be put in it!"

Then he gave orders to pack up and march home. As he was watching the men break up their camp, he said:

"A war with the giant has one good thing about it. Look at these hospital-tents; they haven't been needed at all."

When the young king reached his palace, he left his men there, and, with a few followers, he went straight on to Falema's father's kingdom.

When he came near the royal residence, there, on the balcony, he saw the princess, dressed in a lovely gown of pink chenille; and behind her, in a row, all her seamstresses, in their nice new linsey-woolsey short-gowns, eating calves-foot jelly with golden spoons, to refresh themselves after their hard labors.

The next day, the young King Gantalor and the Princess Falema were married, and she led him such a happy life, that he never cared to go to war again. And, strange to say, he found that when he did not want to fight anybody, nobody seemed to want to fight him. The officers of his army came to the wedding, and each of them the next day married one of the princess's seamstresses, and each couple had a house and garden given them, and they lived happily, and got very fat. The common soldiers, married anybody that would have them, just like other people, and they each had a house and garden given them, and lived as happily, and got just as fat as the officers. As for the giant, he took the pieces of the princess's dresses home to his mother, who made him a patchwork quilt out of them, and he slept under it for a long time; but I think it must be entirely worn out now.