They were so pleased with it that they fell to kissing each other over and over again, and in their joy had almost wasted a kiss or two on Pirka herself, which would have been a useless piece of extravagance.
"But we cannot take service with all our silk clothes and gewgaws," said Pirka. "We must put on the rustic dress in which we came hither."
Michal readily consented to this change of raiment, and going into the adjoining room, she took off her dress, her earrings, and her necklace. Her three dresses and all her jewels she gave to Pirka, who had calculated on obtaining these perquisites all along.
"Do you think Valentine will like me in this dress?" asked the pretty young lady, as she put on her sober weeds again.
"It won't quite do yet," said Pirka. "Even through this rustic garb people might easily spy out the fine lady. We cannot take service with this rose and milk complexion, for everyone would immediately ask us out of what castle we had escaped. We must find a remedy against that also. We must make freckles on our cheeks and foreheads, so that we may not look so pretty."
"But will Valentine love me if I am ugly?"
"Sweetheart! he would love you even if you were as hideous as I am."
With that, the witch took freshly plucked wolf's milk flowers, the juice of which rubbed into the skin leaves behind spots resembling freckles which cannot be washed away by water, and only very gradually fade away. Pirka well rubbed Michal's face with the juice of the wolf's milk flowers till she was as speckled and as spotted as a pea hen. It was as well that there was no mirror at hand to tell pretty Michal what a fright she had become.
This done, Pirka led her back to Valentine, and said to him: "Well! how does my serving wench please you?" But he, without troubling himself in the least about the freckles, embraced his beloved as fervently as before.
When, however, the kopanitschar's wife came in again and saw the ugly serving maid, she asked what had become of the wondrously beautiful lady who had lately been there.