Cherry pushed him away and began to sob again. “Why do you kiss me?” she cried. “You don’t care for anybody but your beautiful lady. If you want to kiss anybody, go kiss her.”
When her master heard that, his face changed, and he looked at her so angrily that Cherry was frightened. “So you have been prying!” he cried, “and Aunt Prudence was right when she warned me not to trust you. Now that you have seen what you have seen, you can stay here no longer.”
“Oh, do not send me away,” Cherry begged of him. “Let me stay and I promise that I will never disobey you again.”
“I am sorry, Cherry,” her master answered, and he no longer looked angry, “but after this, they would not let me keep you.” With that he raised his hand and gave her a sharp box on the ears, and she lost all consciousness.
When she came to herself she was sitting on the doorstep of her own home and her mother was shaking her by the shoulder and calling her.
Cherry started up and looked about her. “Where—where is he?” she cried. “How did I come here, and what has become of my master?”
Her mother did not know what she was talking about, and when after a little, Cherry began and told her all her story, she thought the child was dreaming or had lost her wits. But when later on she found that the girl’s pockets were full of fairy gold, enough to make them rich for years, she was obliged to believe that the story was true, wonderful as it was.
But for a long time after she came home, Cherry used to trudge away to the lonely heath every now and then, and sit there hoping her master would come for her. But he never did, and never again did she find a place where the wages were in gold and paid as freely as they had been in fairyland.