There was once a princess who was very, very proud. She was so proud that she always walked about with her head up in the air.
One morning she went out for a walk in the park which surrounded her palace. It was a fine sunny morning, and the princess sent away her attendants and said she wished to be alone. She also asked her ladies-in-waiting to go into the library and write an essay on "The Importance of Princesses." And presently a very bad storm came. The Princess was wearing the thinnest of silken frocks, and she had no umbrella! She was afraid of sheltering under the trees, because there was quite a lot of thunder and lightning, and everyone knows it is dangerous to shelter under trees in a thunderstorm. So she came out on to the open grass and started running.
But the storm was so heavy that the rain all got into her eyes because her face was lifted up so high. She was so blinded by the water in her eyes that she couldn't see where she was going, and she walked right over the edge of the pond and fell in. When she was in, she couldn't see how to get out, and she even started walking further into the pond. when she started calling for help, the rain ran into her mouth and down her throat and nearly choked her. By now the ladies-in-waiting were all in the library writing their essays. They were so busy that they hardly noticed the storm.
At last they noticed it! They all rushed off with umbrellas, and they found the Princess, who had been standing in the pond all this time, getting a dreadful cold!
It took her a long time to get well, and it was a bit of a lesson to her. She was never quite so haughty after that, and in time she held her head almost like other people.
