"Aye, I liked you very well," said the miller. "You are a handy——" A stamp of her foot drowned the rest. "But you should have come in time," he went on.
"And this Gertrude—is she pretty?" demanded Osra.
"Gertrude is well enough," said the miller. "But she has only two hundred crowns." And he put the purse, now full again, on the table with a resigned sigh.
"And you shall have no more," cried Osra, snatching up her purse in great rage. "And you and Gertrude may——"
"What of Gertrude?" came at this moment from the door of the room where the sacks were. The Princess turned round swift as the wind, and she saw in the doorway a short and very broad girl, with a very wide face and straggling hair; the girl's nose was very flat, and her eyes were small; but her great mouth smiled good-humouredly and, as the Princess looked, she let slip to the ground a sack of flour that she had been carrying on her sturdy back.
"Aye, Gertrude is well enough," said the miller, looking at her contentedly. "She is very strong and willing."
Then, while Gertrude stood wondering and staring with wide eyes in the doorway, the Princess swept up to the miller, and leant over him, and cried:
"Look at my face, look at my face! What manner of face is it?"
"It is well enough," said the miller. "But Gertrude is——"
There was a crash on the floor, and the six hundred crowns rolled out of the purse, and scattered, spinning and rolling hither and thither all over the floor and into every corner of the room. And Princess Osra cried: "Have you no eyes?" and then she turned away; for her lip was quivering, and she would not have the miller see it. But she turned from the miller only to face Gertrude his wife; Gertrude's small eyes brightened with sudden intelligence.