The old wife stood the bag on the floor, and the miller agreed:
“I’ll grind it for you; half the bag for you for your cake, and half for me for my trouble.”
“Not so, my son! I shall not have enough for my Yuletide cake, because I have six sons, and for seventh my grandson, the Sun, who was born to-day.”
“Go away and don’t talk rubbish, you old fool!” burst out the miller. “A likely one you are to be the Sun’s grandmother!”
So they argued this way and that; but the miller wouldn’t consent to grind for less than one-half the bag, and so the old wife picked up her bag again and went away by the way she came.
But the miller had a daughter, a beautiful girl, called Bride Bridekins. When she was born, the fairies bathed her in the water that falls from the wheel, so that all evils should turn from her, even as water runs away from a mill. And, moreover, the fairies foretold that at her wedding the Sun should be bridesman. Just fancy! she was the Sun’s little bride! So they called her Bride Bridekins, and she was most beautiful and smiling as a summer’s day.
Bride Bridekins was sorry when the miller sent away the old wife so unkindly. She went out and waited in the wood for the old wife, and said:
“Come again to-morrow, Mother, when I shall be alone. I will grind your corn for you for nothing.”
Next day the miller and his wife went into the wood to cut the Yule log, and Bride Bridekins was left alone.
Before long the old wife came up with her bag.