About this story
Your mother has sewn a school dress deliberately short, refusing to admit you have outgrown a child's hem, and your protest ends with a kicked-over washstand and a flooded floor. Ashamed, you cut off your favorite curl to bind an apology into a bouquet, an offering that lands harder than you meant it to. By dawn the dress is lengthened, the curl gone, and the coach waiting.
How it opens
Four children lay in summer grass while clean sheets brightened beside them.
Pin RambothamWondrous Fair, what did the prince find beyond the forest?
You gave the princess a white gown, a gold belt, and no mud from traveling.
LeppieBut you said her clothes showed marks from the road.
FrankParrakeets! Look, Laura, all green above the blue-gum.
Pin RambothamTomorrow's train will end the story before the prince chooses.