"What does the verse mean?" asked Nan.

"That, I do not know. It is written in a foreign language. But it is a powerful charm."

"O, mother! will you write it off for me, if I will bring you a bit of paper and a pen?"

"Certainly," replied her mother, and wrote it off when Nan brought pen and paper.

"Now," said she, "you must run off and play again, and not hinder me any longer, or I shall not get my butter made to-day."

So Nan danced away with the verse, and the sprig of dill, and her mother went on churning.

She had a beautiful tall stone churn, with the sides all carved with figures in relief. There were milkmaids and cows as natural as life all around the churn. The dairy was charming, too. The shelves were carved stone; and the floor had a little silvery rill running right through the middle of it, with green ferns at the sides. All along the stone shelves were set pans full of yellow cream, and the pans were all of solid silver, with a chasing of buttercups and daisies around the brims.

It was not a common dairy, and Dame Clementina was not a common dairy-woman. She was very tall and stately, and wore her silver-white hair braided around her head like a crown, with a high silver comb at the top. She walked like a queen; indeed she was a noble count's daughter. In her early youth, she had married a pretty young dairyman, against her father's wishes; so she had been disinherited. The dairyman had been so very poor and low down in the world, that the count felt it his duty to cast off his daughter, lest she should do discredit to his noble line. There was a much pleasanter, easier way out of the difficulty, which the count did not see. Indeed, it was a peculiarity of all his family, that they never could see a way out of a difficulty, high and noble as they were. The count only needed to have given the poor young dairyman a few acres of his own land, and a few bags of his own gold, and begged the king, with whom he had great influence, to knight him, and all the obstacles would have been removed; the dairyman would have been quite rich and noble enough for his son-in-law. But he never thought of that, and his daughter was disinherited. However, he made all the amends to her that he could, and fitted her out royally for her humble station in life. He caused this beautiful dairy to be built for her, and gave her the silver milk-pans, and the carved stone churn.

"My daughter shall not churn in a common wooden churn, or skim the cream from wooden pans," he had said.

The dairyman had been dead a good many years now, and Dame Clementina managed the dairy alone. She never saw anything of her father, although he lived in his castle not far off, on a neighboring height. When the sky was clear, she could see its stone towers against it. She had four beautiful white cows, and Nan drove them to pasture; they were very gentle.