The cook went forward and, taking a fork from the table, tried to pick the breakfast up, but it slid off the fork; so, without more ado, she took it up in her fingers and examined it carefully, as if to see that it had not changed since she sent it up. When she had done, she looked up and said:
‘Why, it’s as nice an egg as can be bought for money, only it’s a bit addled; and I dropped it in the blacking, but I wiped it on my own apron—look there.’
And she lifted up her apron to look at; and it certainly looked as if a good many eggs had been wiped on it.
However, the King did not notice that.
‘Oh, it’s an egg, is it?’ he said; ‘I didn’t know. I thought it was a piece of coal, and——’
But at this point the cook broke in.
‘Call my eggs a coal! It’s a crying shame! You ought to be ashamed of yourself, an old man like you, too. Here have I been working for three hours this very morning at that egg, and he calls it a coal; and me that plagued too with demons! Why, only this morning one of ’em came and banged at the door so hard that it broke, and then it came in. It was a blue one, with red eyes and a long green tail with a fork at the end; and it stuck the fork in the egg, and then put the egg in the blacking and threw it all over the kitchen; and then it kicked the blacking pot over and flew out at the door before I could say “Gemini”; and I saw it with my own eyes, and it was as ugly a little——’
But this was more than the Princess could stand.
‘Oh, what a—an untruth that is! Look at me. Am I a blue demon with red eyes and a tail?’