Once upon a time, there was a girl. Well, not really a girl so much as a lady, for you see, her father was the Duke of Cassopie. This girl, pardon me, lady, was named Ursula and was very beautiful, with long blonde hair and twinkling blue eyes. Now Ursula loved nothing better than to play in the garden with her maid, Katie, and her puppy Fluffy. Fluffy was hardly fluffy at all, being a large mastiff. He was really rather slobbery to tell the truth, but I suppose that could be why Ursula named him Fluffy, because she loved to use her imagination, too.
At any rate, one of Lady Ursula's favorite games was hide and seek. She loved to play and would coax Katie into playing with her nearly every day. Fluffy would play too, but wasn't very good, as he usually had his tail sticking out, or a trail of slobber behind him. One day, while they were playing, and Ursula was in a very good hiding place up a tree, she heard Katie calling for her. Nearly hopping on top of Katie, she went to see what was going on.
Katie told her that there were visitors arriving. Ursula clapped her hands in the kind of innocent joy that only a young lady can pull of with any sense of dignity. Sprinting past Katie, she headed straight for the main hall, sure that there would be a Prince or Princess there, riding a great white stallion with hundreds of people at his or her beck and call, a golden carriage, and any number of other wondrous things. She was disappointed. When she got to the inner hall, there were only a couple of old nobles there. No sign of a handsome prince or magnificent princess anywhere. Not even any sign of a horse. She didn�t think about the fact, of course, that it was generally frowned on to ride a horse inside the building, but�strange things are to be expected when one is using one�s imagination.
Just at that instant, Ursula's father saw her and called her over to him. He introduced them, and said that the man had a son about her age. Ursula wasn't really sure what that had to do with her, but she tried to look politely interested. Really, she would much rather have gone back out to the garden with Katie. However, that was not what her father had in mind. He thought that the two kids should meet at once. Since there was no arguing with her father once he had made up his mind, Ursula resolved to get the meeting over with quickly so that she could return to her game. She followed him to the coach that was waiting outside.
In the coach was a boy, as her father had said, about her own age. Ursula looked at him quickly, then at her father. The boy was, she thought, overly-skinny and didn't look like much fun at all. His name was Stanley, and her father said he would be staying with them for some time. Something about betrothal. She really didn't care, so was perhaps paying a bit less attention than she should have. When she asked if she could please go play, her father made her take Stanley too. That would have been fine, but he promptly announced that hide and seek was a game for little kids and sissies, and he wasn't going to play it. After a momentary bout of disappointment, Ursula, who always tried her best to please people, (well, almost always...there was a bit of an incident with the gardener and his berries, but that is a story for another day), decided that they could play something else. However, he absolutely refused to play hopscotch, Ursula's second favorite game, or tag, or catch, or any number of other things that she suggested. She thought about giving up and going off to play with Fluffy instead, but remembered that her father had said she must play with Stanley, and be very nice, so she tried again to think of something to do. She was simply running out of games. As she was explaining the rules of a game of her creation, Jump-step, to a very bored Stanley, they were called for dinner by the cook. Ursula was very happy to go eat.
It turns out that Stanley was a very disagreeable young man. He wouldn't eat what the cook had made for dinner, and instead spent much of the time throwing mashed potatoes into Ursula's hair. Now, if you have ever had mashed potatoes in your hair, you know what a mess this is. If not, well, I suppose you don't know, but you can probably imagine what an awful thing it is to clean up. At any rate, Ursula had to go and wash her hair immediately after dinner, and then go to bed, hoping beyond all hope that Stanley would be gone when she got up.
He wasn't. He was there and even worse than the day before. Before breakfast even began, Ursula had to argue with him about unicorns. He was silly enough to say that they don't exist, when everyone knows that unicorns do, in fact, exist, but he refused to believe it, and given the shy temperament of most unicorns, Ursula could hardly call one to prove it to him. After breakfast, he followed her around, copying everything she said. There is nothing more annoying than someone copying you, as Ursula soon found out. When she tried to hide away in the garden, he told her father, who said she must come out at once and play with young Stanley. Lunch and the rest of the afternoon were no better, with much braid-tugging and name-calling.
Another day, and another, had passed in much the same fashion, and Ursula was beginning to get extraordinarily put out. She hadn't played a decent game of hide and seek since Stanley had arrived, and worse still, Fluffy had taken to spending most of the day hiding in the barn to avoid Stanley's antics. After a particularly aggravating morning, Ursula decided that she had had quite enough. Slipping away while Stanley was pulling up the gardener's prize roses, Ursula ran up to her room and started packing. She got out a large bag and put in a few outfits and an extra pair of shoes. She also threw in a ball and a small pouch that held her stones. Ursula, you see, liked to collect small pebbles that she found on her adventures. That packed, Ursula checked to be sure there was no one in the hallway, and quietly made her way to the kitchen, where she helped herself to a loaf of bread and a large piece of cheese, stuffing them into her bag with the clothes.
Ursula managed to sneak out the back gate unnoticed, stopping briefly at the stable to get Fluffy, who was more than happy to come along. Once outside the walls of the manor, Ursula wasn't sure where to go, so she set off down the path that led away from the door. Ursula walked for what surely must have been hours before she came to a small lake and decided to have a quick snack, sharing, of course, with Fluffy. Having had a snack, Ursula was feeling much better, so she decided it best to keep going down the path a ways farther. After a while, she came to the edge of a large forest with huge trees and lots of fabulous hiding spots. She rather wished that she had asked Katie to come along, so they could play a game. However, since Katie wasn't along, Ursula and Fluffy trekked on by themselves.
Just as Ursula decided that she was getting very bored, Fluffy apparently decided the same thing. He wandered off the path. Ursula had little choice but to follow him, seeing as he wouldn't come when she called him, so they walked about in the woods for some time, the large dog and the little girl, I mean, lady. Ursula was really beginning to think that this trip perhaps wasn't the best idea she had ever had when it started raining. Being in the middle of the woods, there really wasn't much to do but keep walking and hope it stopped. Then, by some happy chance, Ursula spotted an old cottage just ahead, so she called for Fluffy and started heading that way. Not being one to like getting wet, Fluffy came right away.
When they reached the cottage, Ursula knocked on the door. There was no answer, though, so she let herself in, figuring that the owners would probably not mind just one small, wet girl and her dog using their house to get out of the rain. This might have been a silly thing to figure in ordinary circumstances, but since the house had been deserted for some time, its previous occupants having moved over a year before, there was no problem with the pair camping out there. This did lead to one rather large problem for Ursula, however, for in the rain her bread had gotten wet and, with no one living there for such a very long time, there was no food to be found anywhere. Looking around the small cottage, she spotted a bed. With a sigh, Ursula decided to lie down and take a nap until it stopped raining, since she couldn't eat her lunch, and was really quite tired from her long journey. When she went to lie down, Ursula discovered that the bed was already occupied, by a very large spider and its web. Ursula couldn't very well sleep with a spider in her bed, so, being a very little girl, and having had, thus far, a very bad day, she did what any other little girl might and sat down in the middle of the floor, crying. Fluffy, concerned to find his girl crying, laid down beside her, with his giant head in her small lap. Ursula hugged him and very soon fell asleep there on the floor with the dog.
Ursula woke up a short time later to Fluffy's loud bark. She jumped and rushed to the door of the cottage, overjoyed to see Katie wandering through the woods nearby, a worried look on her face. Ursula ran as quickly as she could to jump up and give Katie an enormous hug. Katie picked her up and spun around, laughing happily, though Ursula could see that her eyes looked a little watery. They made it back to the castle just as it was getting dark, and Ursula's parents were waiting at the gate, having returned from their search only moments before. After a round of happy hellos, Ursula got up the nerve to ask where Stanley was, and was told that he and his father had gone home earlier that very afternoon. It seems that the two men had had a fight and any plans they had made for the future were no more. Ursula went to bed happy, sure that tomorrow would be a much better day.