‘This will never do,’ she said; ‘I must really let them see me, or they won’t come.’
So she took the feather from her bonnet, and called again. This time the cows seemed quite ready to come, and they trotted along to the gate and crowded round her to be stroked. So she shut the gate again and told the cows to go on—for they understood her quite well—and then she went on after them. When they got to the dairy she milked them one after the other as they came in their regular order to the stool. She was milking the last one—Cherry, the best of them all—and she leaned her face against its side, and listened to the ‘thud, thud,’ of the milk as it streamed into the pail with a foam like the sea in a rage. She was in fact almost lulled to sleep by it, when she was startled by a voice behind her. It was so sudden that she almost upset the milk-pail in her fright.
‘It seems to be easy work milking,’ said the voice, and she looked round and saw it was the Prince, who had come quietly up behind, and was leaning over the fence at her back, looking on lazily at her.
‘Oh! how you startled me, Prince,’ she said.
‘Did I?’ he answered. ‘I am very sorry for that; but you needn’t call me Prince yet. I’m not a Prince, you see, and then you’re the adopted daughter of my parents, so you ought to call me your brother.’
‘Oh, really!’ said she. ‘However, you soon will be a Prince, and then I shan’t be able to call you brother, shall I?’
‘Why not?’
‘Because you will be a Prince, and I am only a dairymaid.’
‘But you’re a Princess, aren’t you?’ he asked.
‘I was a Princess once,’ she said, with a sigh; ‘but——’