"But what shall we serve my husband?" said the alarmed ogress. "He has set his heart on a dish of boy with onion sauce, and I dare not disappoint him."
"Leave that to me," said clever Dimple.
So she killed a lamb, and smothered it with onions, and the ogre knew no difference. The poor youth was set free, and great was his joy to find a friend in his proposed executioner. Dimple told him her story, and heard from him how long and sorrowfully her father had mourned her disappearance. Jim vowed to deliver her from the ogre; but both saw it was necessary to act with caution, at first. She was obliged to shut him up in an iron coop in the courtyard near the kitchen; and every time the old crone came into the kitchen, she went to the coop and felt and pinched the poor lad's legs and breast unmercifully.
"Surely he is tender enough to serve to-night, cook," she would say, impatiently. "Your master has an attack of the gout, and I am at my wit's end to keep him in good humor. Nothing would please him so much as a slice or two of the breast, grilled with pepper and mustard."
"Leave that to me," Dimple would answer; and she forthwith killed a pig, and served a dish so deliciously seasoned that the ogre forgot to growl, for at least an hour after eating it.
Once, while the supper was going on, Dimple and Jim crept up to listen at the dining-room door. After the ogre had drank a gallon or two of wine, he began to talk freely to his wife.
"Such a dainty dish as this you have served me deserves a reward, my dear," he said in a greasy voice, while the ogress meekly dipped some bread in the gravy as her share of the feast. "Open the closet in the corner yonder, and get me out my birdling."
What should the birdling prove to be but a tiny nightingale shining like gold! When its mouth opened at the ogre's command, "Sing, birdling, sing!" out poured a rain of sapphires, diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and amethysts, that lay in a glittering stream upon the table-cloth.
"Take these for a bracelet," said the ogre, gathering them up in his hand, and tossing them to his wife; "and then put away my birdling, that no covetous eye may look upon this wonder of the world."