“Good fortune be yours, young maiden,” said the wife.
“And yours, too,” returned Bride Bridekins. “Wait a moment, Mother, till we open the mill.”
The mill was worked by a little wheel which caught the water with four paddles set cross-wise, which turned like a spindle. Now the miller had shut off the water, and Bride Bridekins had to wade up to her knees in the icy stream to open the sluice.
The mill clattered, round went the mill-stones, and Bride Bridekins ground the old wife’s corn. She filled up the bag with flour and took nothing for her pains.
“Eh, thank you kindly, maiden,” said Mother Muggish, “and I’ll help you whithersoever your feet may carry you, since your feet you did not save from the ice-cold wave, nor grudge your hands to soil with unrequited toil. And, moreover, I’ll tell my grandson, the Sun, to whom he owes his Yuletide cake.” And the old wife took up her bag and went.
From that day nothing would prosper in the mill without Bride Bridekins. Unless her hand was on the mill, the paddles would not take the water; unless she looked in the bin, there would be no flour in it. No matter how much might fall into it from the grain-box, it was all lost on the floor; the bin remained empty unless Bride Bridekins fed the mill. And so it was with everything in and about the mill.
This went on for many a day, on and on and never any change, till the miller and his wife began to be jealous of their daughter and to hate her. The harder the girl worked and the more she earned, the blacker they looked at her, because it came to her as easy as a song, and to them not even with toiling and moiling.
It was upon a morning about Beltane time, when the Sun, strong and flaming, travels across one-half of heaven like a ball of pure gold. The Sun no longer slept in the morass, nor did Muggish foster him now; but the Sun was lord of the world, and sky and earth obeyed him. Bride Bridekins sat at Beltane time beside the mill and thought to herself:
“If I could only get away, since I cannot please these cross-patches anyhow!”
And just as she thought this, there appeared before her the old wife, who was really Muggish.