A prince travels the world to find a suitable princess to marry-but none of the girls he meets seems right, and he cannot be sure any is a real princess. And so he returns home sadly. But then one stormy night there is a knock at the door and in comes a girl dressed in rags. She claims she is Princess Phoebe, looking for a prince she can marry. The prince is soon fascinated by her, so the queen devises a plan-she will place a single pea underneath the many mattresses
on Phoebe's bed. In the morning Phoebe complains of not having slept a wink. The queen is overjoyed-if the girl has felt the pea under all those layers she must be a real princess!