“Prince!” cried the shepherdess, and up jumped the dog, and looked in her face, wagging his bushy tail.
“Fetch her back,” she said, pointing to the door.
With two or three bounds Prince caught the princess, again threw her down, and taking her by her clothes dragged her back into the cottage, and dropped her at his mistress’ feet, where she lay like a bundle of rags.
“Get up,” said the shepherdess.
Rosamond got up as pale as death.
“Go and clean the boots.”
“I don’t know how.”
“Go and try. There are the brushes, and yonder is the blacking-pot.”
Instructing her how to black boots, it came into the thought of the shepherdess what a fine thing it would be if she could teach this miserable little wretch, so forsaken and ill-bred, to be a good, well-behaved, respectable child. She was hardly the woman to do it, but every thing well meant is a help, and she had the wisdom to beg her husband to place Prince under her orders for a while, and not take him to the hill as usual, that he might help her in getting the princess into order.
When the husband was gone, and his boots, with the aid of her own finishing touches, at last quite respectably brushed, the shepherdess told the princess that she might go and play for a while, only she must not go out of sight of the cottage-door.