For ten minutes she sat alone, perhaps more; then the door was flung open and her host flung himself in, no longer with the gay air which had sat like a cloak upon him, but hot and sulky, the jug in his hand as empty as when he had gone out.
“I have failed,” he said gloomily. “I have failed, though I promised you the milk.”
“Couldn’t you find a cow?” asked Virginia.
“Oh yes, I found one, more than one, and caught them too. I even forced them to stand still, and grasped them by their udders, but not a drop of milk would come down. Abominable brutes! I would gladly have killed them, but that would have given you no milk.”
For her life, the Princess could not help laughing, his air was so desperate. If only those cows could have known who he was, and appreciated the honor!
“Pray, pray don’t mind,” she begged. “You have done more than most men could have done. After all, I’ll have a glass of Rhaetian beer with you, to drink your health and that of your Emperor. I wonder by the by if he, who prides himself on doing all things well, can milk a cow?”
“If not, he should learn,” said the chamois hunter, viciously. “There’s no knowing, it seems, when one may need the strangest accomplishments, and be humiliated for lack of them.”
“No, not humiliated,” Virginia assured him. “It’s always instructive to find out one’s limitations. And you have been most good to me. See, while you were gone, I ate the slice of bread and ham you cut, and never did a meal taste better. Now, you must have many things to do, which I’ve made you leave undone. I’ve trespassed on you too long.”
“Indeed, lady, it seems scarcely a moment since you came, and I have no work to do,” the chamois hunter insisted.
“But I’ve a friend waiting for me, on the mountain,” the Princess confessed. “Luckily, she had her lunch and will have eaten it, and her guide-book must have kept her happy for a while; but by this time I’m afraid she’s anxious, and would be coming in search of me, if she dared to stir. I must go. Will you tell me by what name I shall remember my—rescuer, when I recall this day?”