“Late at night, when the King’s Daughter is in bed, bring her here in her sleep; she shall do servant’s work for me.”
The Little Man said, “That is an easy thing for me to do, but a very dangerous thing for you, for if it is discovered, you will fare ill.”
When twelve o’clock had struck, the door sprang open, and the Little Man carried in the Princess.
“Aha! are you there?” cried the soldier, “get to your work at once! Fetch the broom and sweep the chamber.”
When she had done this, he ordered her to come to his chair. Then he stretched out his feet and said, “Pull off my boots for me,” and made her pick them up again, and clean and brighten them.
She, however, did everything he bade her, without opposition, silently and with half-shut eyes. When the first cock crowed, the Little Man carried her back to the royal Palace, and laid her in her bed.
Next morning, when the Princess arose, she went to her father, and told him that she had had a very strange dream. “I was carried through the streets with the rapidity of lightning,” said she, “and taken into a soldier’s room, and I had to wait upon him like a servant, sweep his room, clean his boots, and do all kinds of menial work. It was only a dream, and yet I am just as tired as if I really had done everything.”
“The dream may have been true,” said the King. “I will give you a piece of advice. Fill your pocket full of peas, and make a small hole in it, and then if you are carried away again, they will fall out and leave a track in the streets.”
But unseen by the King, the Little Man was standing beside him when he said that, and heard all. At night, when the sleeping Princess was again carried through the streets, some peas certainly did fall out of her pocket, but they made no track, for the crafty Little Man had just before scattered peas in every other street. And again the Princess was compelled to do servant’s work until cock-crow.
Next morning, the King sent his people out to seek the track, but it was all in vain, for in every street poor children were sitting, picking up peas, and saying, “It must have rained peas, last night.”