Now, her shoes were worn into holes by long journeying, and her clothes were torn to threads and tatters by the brambles through which she had passed, and hung fluttering all about her, and she looked for all the world like nothing else than a common beggar-maid, except for her golden hair. So it was that when she knocked at the door of the prince’s castle, and the porter came and opened it and heard that she wanted to see the prince, he snapped his fingers and laughed. All the same he told her that the cook wanted a serving wench in the kitchen, and that she might have the place if she liked; if that did not suit her she might be jogging the way that she had come.
Well, there was nothing for it but for the princess to serve in the kitchen or to go away again. So she bound up her hair in a tattered kerchief so that the beautiful golden tresses might not be seen, and down she went to serve the cook.
The prince’s dinner was cooking at the fire, and the princess was to watch it so that it might not be burned. So she watched it, and as she watched it she wept.
“Why do you weep, hussy?” said the cook.
“Ah me!” said the princess, “once I ate with my love and drank with my love and lived by his side. If he did but know to what I have come how his heart would ache!”
After that the dinner was served, but, while nobody was looking, the princess plucked a strand of her golden hair and laid it upon a white napkin and the napkin upon an empty plate. Over all she placed a silver cover, and when the Raven prince lifted it there lay the strand of golden hair. “Where did this come from?” said he. But nobody could tell him that.
The next day the same thing happened; the princess watched the dinner, and as she watched she wept.
“Why do you weep, hussy?” said the cook. And thereto the princess answered as she had done before: “Ah me! once I ate with my love and drank with my love and lived by his side. If he did but know to what I have come, how his heart would ache!”
Then, while nobody was looking, she plucked another strand of golden hair and the prince found it as he had done the other, and no one could tell him whence it came.
