"Then go down to the ground gnome first, and grind thy nose down, and
tidy thyself up a bit, and stick a comb in thy hair instead of an iron
rake," said the dwellers in the mountains.

So Gygra's daughter tramped along in the middle of the river, till the
foss steamed and the storm whirled round about her. Down she went to the
ground gnome, and was scoured and scrubbed and combed out finely.

* * * * *

One evening a large-limbed coarse-grained wench stepped into the
general-dealer's kitchen, and asked if she could be taken into service.

"You must be cook, then," said Madame[2]. It seemed to her that the
wench was one who would stir the porridge finely, and would make no
bones about a little extra wood-chopping and tub-washing. So they took
her on.

She was a roughish colt, and her ways were roughish too. The first time
she carried in a load of wood, she shoved so violently against the
kitchen door that she burst its hinges. And however many times the
carpenter might mend the door, it always remained hingeless, for she
burst it open with her foot every time she brought in wood.

When she washed up, too, heaps and heaps of pots and pans were piled up
higgledy-piggledy from meal to meal, so that the kitchen shelves and
tables could hold no more, and bustle about as she might, they never
seemed to grow less.

Nor had her mistress a much better opinion of her scouring.

When Toad, for so they called her, set to work with the sand-brush, and
scrubbed with all her might, the wooden, tin, and pewter vessels would
no doubt have looked downright bonny if they hadn't broken to bits
beneath her hands. And when her mistress tried to show her how it ought
to be done, she only gasped and gaped.

Such sets of cracked cups, and such rows of chipped and handleless jugs
and dishes, had never before been seen in that kitchen.

And then, too, she ate as much as all the other servants put together.

So her mistress complained to her master, and said that the sooner they
were well quit of her the better.

Out into the kitchen went the general dealer straightway. He was quite
red in the face, and flung open the kitchen-door till it creaked again.
He would let her know, he said, that she was not there to only stand
with her back to the fire and warm her dirty self.

Now when he saw the lazy sluttish beast lounging over the kitchen bench
and doing nothing but gape through the window-panes at his bo