he would alike fail to return; so she made an
excuse by saying she could think of no one who did not give her enough
money to satisfy her.

At this the stout butler laughed. "Money?" said he. "I have seventy
pounds laid by with master. Won't that satisfy thee?"

"Happen it would," she replied.

So the very next night the butler came to her with the seventy pounds in
golden sovereigns, and she held out her apron and took them, saying she
was content; for she had thought of a plan. Now as they were going
upstairs together she stopped and said:

"Mr. Butler, excuse me for a minute. I have left the shutters of the
wash-house open, and I must shut them, or they will be banging all night
and disturb master and missus!"

Now though the butler was stout and beginning to grow old, he was
anxious to seem young and gallant; so he said at once:

"Excuse me, my beauty, you shall not go. I will go and shut them. I
shan't be a moment!"

So off he set, and no sooner had he gone than she out with her three
feathers, and putting them on her hand, said in a hurry:

"By virtue of the three feathers from over my true love's heart may the
shutters never cease banging till morning, and may Mr. Butler's hands be
busy trying to shut them."

And so it happened.

Mr. Butler shut the shutters, but--bru-u-u! there they were hanging open
again. Then he shut them once more, and this time they hit him on the
face as they flew open. Yet he couldn't stop; he had to go on. So there
he was the whole livelong night. Such a cursing, and banging, and
swearing, and shutting, never was, until dawn came, and, too tired to be
really angry, he crept back to his bed, resolving that come what might
he would not tell what had happened to him and thus get the laugh on
him. So he kept his own counsel, and the girl kept the seventy pounds,
and laughed in her sleeve at her would-be lover.

Now after a time the coachman, a spruce middle-aged man, who had long
wanted to marry the clever, pretty laundry-maid, going to the pump to
get water for his horses overheard her giving orders to the three
feathers, and peeping through the keyhole as the butler had done, saw
her sitting at her ease in a chair while the clothes, all washed and
ironed and mangled, came flying to the table.

So, just as the butler had done, he went to the girl and said, "I have
you now, my pretty. Don't dare to turn up your nose at me, for if you do
I'll tell mistress you are a witch."