t as her feet would
carry her, in the direction of the city. So eager was she, that again
and again she fell, but only to get up, and run on faster than before.

IX.

The shepherdess carried Rosamond home, gave her a warm bath in the tub
in which she washed her linen, made her some bread-and-milk, and after
she had eaten it, put her to bed in Agnes's crib, where she slept all
the rest of that day and all the following night.

When at last she opened her eyes, it was to see around her a far poorer
cottage than the one she had left--very bare and uncomfortable indeed,
she might well have thought; but she had come through such troubles of
late, in the way of hunger and weariness and cold and fear, that she
was not altogether in her ordinary mood of fault-finding, and so was
able to lie enjoying the thought that at length she was safe, and going
to be fed and kept warm. The idea of doing any thing in return for
shelter and food and clothes, did not, however, even cross her mind.

But the shepherdess was one of that plentiful number who can be wiser
concerning other women's children than concerning their own. Such will
often give you very tolerable hints as to how you ought to manage your
children, and will find fault neatly enough with the system you are
trying to carry out; but all their wisdom goes off in talking, and
there is none left for doing what they have themselves said. There is
one road talk never finds, and that is the way into the talker's own
hands and feet. And such never seem to know themselves--not even when
they are reading about themselves in print. Still, not being specially
blinded in any direction but their own, they can sometimes even act
with a little sense towards children who are not theirs. They are
affected with a sort of blindness like that which renders some people
incapable of seeing, except sideways.

She came up to the bed, looked at the princess, and saw that she was
better. But she did not like her much. There was no mark of a princess
about her, and never had been since she began to run alone. True,
hunger had brought down her fat cheeks, but it had not turned down her
impudent nose, or driven the sullenness and greed from her mouth.
Nothing but the wise woman could do that--and not even she, without the
aid of the princess herself. So the shepherdess thought what a poor
substitute she had got for her own lovely Agnes--who was in fact
equally repulsive, only in a way to which