Primrose was well off; he was only a baby!
And Lavender was happy, but she was troubled about Primrose, how she should look after him and get him food. Because God has so ordered it that the young folk can never get food without the old folk having to think about it.
That is so all the world over, and couldn’t be otherwise even on the Holy Lake.
So Lavender was worried. “To-morrow will be St. Peter’s Day. Will the raspberries be over when St. Peter’s is past? Will the water grow cold and the sun fail when autumn comes? How shall we get through the winter all alone? Will our cottage in the valley go to rack and ruin?”
So Lavender worried, and wherever there is worry, there temptation comes most easily.
One day she sat and mused: “Oh dear! what luck it would be if only we could get back to our cottage!” Just then she heard somebody calling from the Mountain. Lavender looked, and there in the wood on the far side of the furrow stood the youngest of the Votaresses.
She was prettier than the other Votaresses, and loved finery. She had noticed the Golden Girdle on Lavender, and now she wanted that Golden Girdle above anything else in the world.
“Little girl, sister, throw me your Girdle,” called the fairy across the furrow.
“I can’t do that, Fairy; I had that Girdle from my mother,” answered Lavender.
“Little girl, sister, it wasn’t your mother’s Girdle; it belonged to the princess, and the princess has been dead long ago. Throw me the Girdle,” said the Fairy, who remembered the princess.