‘But you won’t, my dear cook,’ said the Princess sweetly.
‘You’ll catch it if you don’t look out!’ howled the cook, as she rose from the floor where she had been cleaning the boots, and in doing so she knocked over an enormous pot of liquid blacking.
‘That’s your doing!’ she cried, as she made a dash at the door.
But the Princess evaded her easily, and she ran outside fully expecting to find the invisible questioner there. But the Princess meanwhile walked through the kitchen and up the back-stairs to her own room.
The room was just as she had left it when she went away, except that the bed seemed to have grown rather small for her, or rather she had grown too large for the bed.
However, she went in, and locking the door, laid herself down on the bed, and soon dropped off to sleep; for, as you may imagine, she was rather tired, for she had not slept for nearly two days—that is, ever since she had first reached the moon.
It did not seem that she had slept three minutes before she was awakened by a tremendous noise below-stairs.
‘I wonder what that is,’ she said. ‘I think I’ll get up and see.’
And she went to the wash-hand stand to wash the sea-water off her face, but the soap, from long want of use, had cracked in all directions, and she had to content herself with the water that was in the jug. Then she brushed her hair, which was full of salt, and after that tried to brush the salt off her dress; for the sea-water had dried on it, and had left it shining all over with the salt. Before she had quite finished, however, the noise that had waked her sounded again. It seemed as if some one were running downstairs very hard.