Buttons: Well don't despair. Sometimes m...

Buttons: Well don't despair. Sometimes miracles do happen. In fact, I know just such a story about a princess and a frog.

Cinderella: I think I might have heard it.

Buttons: Not this one, it's quite original.

Cinderella: Go on then, but don't take too long. Supper is nearly ready.

Buttons: I don't have to tell it, if you're in too much of a hurry.

Cinderella: I'm sorry Buttons. I will listen, now please begin.

Buttons: Well, once upon a time there was a princess.

Cinderella: Was she beautiful?

Buttons: Like an angel. A radiance of goodness shone from her eyes and she had golden hair.

Cinderella: But was she happy?

Buttons: Sadly no. In fact, she was very lonely. She had tutors and bodyguards and gardeners, but no friends her own age to talk to. When she was feeling melancholy, she used to go down to the pond in the garden and talk to the frogs.

Cinderella: Were they handsome frogs?

Buttons: No, they were green and slimy, and had warts all over their skin.

Cinderella: Yuck.

Buttons: But there was one particular frog who had beautiful, sympathetic eyes. He would sit and listen to the princess for hours as she told him about the handsome prince of her dreams. She told the frog how he would be dashing and modest, gentle and brave, generous and rich - all the impossible contradictory things that princesses look for in a lover.

Cinderella: Men do it too!

Buttons: Of course, but, unfortunately for the frog, being green and slimy was not what the princess had in mind.

Cinderella: Poor thing.

Buttons: Well, towards the beginning of autumn, the princess started to feel particularly sad. She had had no visitors for the entire summer and she was feeling that life was passing her by. Suddenly an idea struck her. She had once heard that a princess could sometimes kiss a frog and turn him into a prince.

Cinderella: I've heard the same thing - mostly from lecherous toads.

Buttons: Quite so. Anyway, this idea made her look at the frog with renewed interest. He did have nice eyes, after all, and he listened to her every word, which was more than she could say for the people she knew. She wrinkled up her nose and bent down and kissed the frog on the forehead. She stepped back full of expectation, but nothing happened. The little frog just looked a little sheepish, which was not the transformation the princess had hoped for, so she placed him back on the lily pad and wandered away feeling really rather disappointed.

Cinderella: Is that the end of the story?

Buttons: Not quite. Autumn was nearly at an end, so to forget his sorrows, the little frog curled up into a ball and went to sleep. When he awoke, it was the following Spring. He rushed over to the pond to have a drink, and found to his great surprise that he had been transformed into a human being.

Cinderella: Was he handsome?

Buttons: It didn't matter, he was freezing. He had to find some clothes or he would die. He was shivering with the cold, so he made his way into the herb garden where the servants' clothes were hung up to dry. It took him half an hour to work out how to put on a shirt, but at last he looked respectable so he set out to find the princess. It was one of the bodyguards who arrested him.

Cinderella: Oh no…

Buttons: They brought him before the princess to explain himself. Luckily, the princess knew immediately who he was. Those eyes were unmistakable. As for the rest of him, he was a man, she had to confess, but the transformation had not been miraculous. She couldn't put her finger on it, but somehow he just wasn't her type. The truth was, in fact, that during the winter she had met a man who was very handsome and he had won her heart. They were very polite to the man-frog, and they entertained him for some days, but finally, against his heart felt wishes he had to say goodbye to the princess and set off to find a new love somewhere else.

Cinderella: Buttons, that's horrible. How could you do that to the poor frog?

Buttons: Well there was a version of the story in which the other prince gradually turned into a frog, but the witnesses were unreliable, so I discounted it.

Cinderella: I think it's a rotten story.

Buttons: Why? The princess finds a prince. The frog becomes a man, and who's to say that he didn't find someone else who made him very happy?

Cinderella: But it's a fairy tale. It's not supposed to end like that.

Buttons: Very well - the prince ran away. The princess married the frog. They all lived happily ever after.

Cinderella: Good. Now I can get on with supper.

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