and cook my supper."

The Princess knew nothing of making fires and cooking, and the beggar
was forced to help her. Early the next morning he called her to clean
the house.

Thus they lived for three days, and when they had eaten up all there was
in the cottage, the man said: "Wife, we can't go on like this, spending
money and earning nothing. You must learn to weave baskets." So he went
out and cut willows, and brought them home and taught her how to weave.
But it made her fingers very sore.

"I see that this will never do," said her husband; "try and spin.
Perhaps you will do that better."

So she sat down and tried to spin, and her husband tried to teach her;
but the threads cut her tender fingers till the blood ran.

"I am afraid you are good for nothing," said the man. "What a bargain I
have got. However, I will try and set up a trade in pots and pans, and
you shall stand in the market and sell them."

"Alas!" sighed she, "when I stand in the market, if any of my father's
court pass by and see me there, how they will laugh at me!"

But the beggar said she must work, if she did not wish to die of hunger.
At first, the trade went very well, for many people, seeing such a
beautiful woman, bought her wares and paid their money without thinking
of taking away the goods. Then her husband bought a fresh lot of ware,
and she sat down one day with it in the corner of the market; but a
drunken soldier came by and rode his horse against her stall, and broke
her goods into a thousand pieces. So she began to weep: "Ah, what will
become of me?" said she. "What will my husband say?" So she ran home and
told him all.

"How silly you were," he said, "to put a china-stall in the corner of
the market where everybody passes; but let us have no more crying. I see
you are not fit for this sort of work; so I will go to the King's palace
and ask if they do not want a kitchen-maid."

So the next day the Princess became a kitchen-maid, and helped the cook
do all the dirtiest work.

She had not been there long before she heard that the eldest son of the
King of that country was going to be married. She looked out of one of
the windows and saw all the ladies and gentlemen of the court in fine
array. Then she thought with a sore heart of her own sad fate. Her
husband, it is true, had been in a way kind to her; but she realized now
the pride and folly which had brought her so low.

All of a sudden, as she was going out to take some