"Take that," cried the cook, giving the scullion the clout she had promised a hundred years before. "Take that for a lazy knave."
"Goodness," yawned the maid who had been plucking the black hen; "I wonder what made me drop off to sleep like that? Well, well, it's to be hoped the cook didn't see me!" And my word, how she made the feathers fly!
Miaou! cried the cat in disgust as he made a pounce at the mouse-hole he had been watching, for the little mouse who had poked his nose out a hundred years before drew it back like a flash and scampered away.
"Dear me!" said the servant who was washing the dishes; "I do believe I have been to sleep with this crock in my hand. It's a mercy I didn't let it fall!" And he went on with his scouring. It was the same thing in the dairy where the maids had fallen asleep while they were skimming the cream and churning the butter. And the cream was not sour for all that a hundred years had passed, nor was the butter rank. But a fly which had been sleeping on the edge of one of the milk-pans woke up and flew down to taste the milk, and fell in and was drowned, so he was none the better because the spell had been taken off the castle.
In the Queen's ante-chamber the maids-of-honour and the ladies-in-waiting sat up and yawned and stretched themselves. Each one of them thought that she was the only one who had fallen asleep, and they all began to explain at the same time that they had only closed their eyes for forty seconds. "It was the heat," they all said to each other. "The sun is very hot for this time of year."
In the King's council chamber the King and all his ministers woke up with a start. The ministers rubbed their eyes and looked very sheepish, for each of them thought that he was alone in being caught napping.
"Your Majesty was saying...?" said the Prime Minister respectfully, leaning forward.