nt them for rich clothes,
and jewels, which he put on; and he ordered them to saddle the white
horse, with gold and silk, that he might ride to meet the King; but he
quite forgot he had a granddaughter to take to the ball.

Meanwhile Tattercoats sat by the kitchen-door weeping, because she could
not go to see the grand doings. And when the old nurse heard her crying
she went to the Lord of the Palace, and begged him to take his
granddaughter with him to the King's ball.

But he only frowned and told her to be silent; while the servants
laughed and said, "Tattercoats is happy in her rags, playing with the
gooseherd! Let her be--it is all she is fit for."

A second, and then a third time, the old nurse begged him to let the
girl go with him, but she was answered only by black looks and fierce
words, till she was driven from the room by the jeering servants, with
blows and mocking words.

Weeping over her ill-success, the old nurse went to look for
Tattercoats; but the girl had been turned from the door by the cook, and
had run away to tell her friend the gooseherd how unhappy she was
because she could not go to the King's ball.

Now when the gooseherd had listened to her story, he bade her cheer up,
and proposed that they should go together into the town to see the King,
and all the fine things; and when she looked sorrowfully down at her
rags and bare feet he played a note or two upon his pipe, so gay and
merry, that she forgot all about her tears and her troubles, and before
she well knew, the gooseherd had taken her by the hand, and she and he,
and the geese before them, were dancing down the road towards the town.

"Even cripples can dance when they choose," said the gooseherd.

Before they had gone very far a handsome young man, splendidly dressed,
riding up, stopped to ask the way to the castle where the King was
staying, and when he found that they too were going thither, he got off
his horse and walked beside them along the road.

"You seem merry folk," he said, "and will be good company."

"Good company, indeed," said the gooseherd, and played a new tune that
was not a dance.

It was a curious tune, and it made the strange young man stare and stare
and stare at Tattercoats till he couldn't see her rags--till he
couldn't, to tell the truth, see anything but her beautiful face.

Then he said, "You are the most beautiful maiden in the world. Will you
marry me?"

Then the gooseherd smiled to himself, an