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name.”
    “Let’s call it ‘The Birches,’ ” said Peregrine. “That’s ordinary enough, and besides, there are two silver birches right beside the door.”
    So “The Birches” it became, and next time they came to the forest Peregrine brought a bottle of ginger ale with him, and the Ordinary Princess smashed the bottle over the door, exactly as she had seen her royal Mama smash bottles of champagne over the prows of her royal Papa’s new ships, and said, “I name you ‘The Birches.’ ”
    The ginger ale trickled down the door and soaked into the moss, and Peter Aurelious tried to drink it.
     
     
    Autumn had come again, and in the forest the leaves were turning red, amber, and gold, and the thickets were full of blackberries, hazelnuts, rose-hips, and thorn apples. But at the castle Queen Hedwig and her daughter the Princess Persephone still stayed and stayed. It did not look as though they were ever going to leave.
    “I do wish to goodness they’d go, or that the King would make up his mind and marry her, or something,” said the Ordinary Princess one day to Peregrine.
    “Why?” asked Peregrine—his mouth rather full of blackberries.
    “Because having so very many visitors makes an awful lot of extra work for kitchen maids,” sighed the Ordinary Princess. “You wouldn’t believe how much! And Ethelinda says that Queen Hedwig won’t go until she’s managed to marry her daughter to King Algernon.”
    “Perhaps he doesn’t want to marry her,” said Peregrine, taking another mouthful of blackberries.
    “Well, she’s awfully pretty,” said the Ordinary Princess. “I saw her once. Haven’t you ever seen her up close?”
    “Once or twice,” said Peregrine.
    “What’s she like?”
    “Like a princess,” said Peregrine.
    The Ordinary Princess threw a very squashy blackberry at him and hit him on the nose. “That’s a silly answer,” she said.
    “No it isn‘t,” said Peregrine, wiping blackberry juice out of his eye. “I’ve worked at the castle for quite a long time, and if you’d seen as many princesses as I have, you’d know what I mean. They are almost as alike as peas in a pod!”
    The Ordinary Princess smiled a little secret smile to herself and said, “Tell me about princesses, Perry.”
    “Well, first of all, they are very beautiful,” said Peregrine, leaning back against a tree trunk and ticking off the points on his fingers. “Then secondly and thirdly and fourthly, they all have long golden hair, blue eyes, and the most lovely complexions. Fifthly and sixthly, they are graceful and accomplished. Sev enthly, they have names like Persephone, Sapphire, and Roxanne. And lastly,” said Peregrine, running out of fingers, “they are all excessively proper and extremely dull ... except when they are make-believe princesses who are really kitchen maids!”
    “That’s just what I’ve always thought about princes,” said the Ordinary Princess.
    “All of them?” asked Peregrine.
    “All except the make-believe ones who are really men-of-all-work,” said the Ordinary Princess.
    Then they both laughed and went back to the castle hand in hand.
     
     
     
    Now just about this time it happened that the Ordinary Princess’s old nurse, Marta, came to the city of Amber on a visit to her sister’s niece, who had married a merchant of Ambergeldar.
    Nurse Marta’s sister’s niece had a large and jolly family of children who loved going for picnics, and Nurse Marta’s sister’s niece’s husband was particularly fond of blackberry-and-apple pie. So one late autumn day, when there was beginning to be a nip in the air, Nurse Marta and her sister’s niece, and her sister’s niece’s husband, and all eight children went picnicking in the forest to collect blackberries.
    Now Nurse Marta was rather stout and short of breath, so instead of rambling through the forest with the others, she sat herself down on a nice comfortable clump of grass with her back to a tree trunk.
    In spite