“You, indeed!” screamed the cook, indignation and envy added to her former despair; “and a little, dirty, ragged, misbegotten starveling—a vagabond—a Hennenpfösl like you, who never saw a kitchen, or a stove, or a frying-pan, or any thing else! to suppose that you can turn a pancake, when I, who have turned pancakes in this castle for three and thirty years, have failed! A likely matter indeed! What is the world coming to? Begone, with your impudence, and mind your hens! Ah! now I think of it, I believe it is you that have bewitched the eggs, and that’s why the pancakes won’t turn! Begone, I say, out of my kitchen, and out of the poultry-house too—I’ll have no more of your tricks with my eggs!” and she turned, with a menacing gesture at Klein-Else, to try her luck once more.
But at the sight of the black mass in the frying-pan, she grew fairly discouraged, and throwing herself down in a chair, wrapt her face in her apron, and wept like a child.
Meantime Klein-Else advanced with light step to the stove, took up the frying-pan, and cleaned it out in a trice, then poured fresh oil into it, and held it over the stove till it boiled; then, while it spluttered cheerily, she deftly poured in the batter, gliding into it the ring which the baron had stealthily put on her hand at church, and along with it, one with a magnificent diamond, which she had taken from her treasury in the rock.
The boiling oil danced and chirped merrily round the cake, the batter rose as batter never rose before; and when Klein-Else shifted it lightly on to the dish, it wore a bright, golden hue, matched only by her own radiant hair.
The cook, waking from her stupor, was in a transport of delight at beholding the effect of her skill, and sent the dish at once to the baron’s table, while Klein-Else took her place in an out-of-the-way corner to hear what should befall.
Nor had she long to wait. The dish had not been gone ten minutes, when the baron’s body-servant came solemnly into the kitchen, with the announcement that the baron demanded the immediate attendance of the cook. “It’s because I kept him waiting for the pancakes, and because the one of that little hussey’s making is not so good as those I have made for him all his life, and his father before him;” and, all trembling and afraid, she rose to follow his messenger. Espying Klein-Else watching anxiously behind a pillar as she passed along, she could not forbear calling out to her, “Ah, wretched child, it is you have got me into this scrape! But you shall pay for it! Why did I let you touch the frying-pan! Why did I let you enter the castle! You had better not come under my sight any more, or I’ll soon show you where the builder made the hole in the wall[60]!” and she dragged herself along slowly, in great fear of the apprehended displeasure of the baron, but comforting herself with the determination to let him know the whole fault lay with the Hennenpfösl.
Great was her surprise, however, to find that it was with no intention of chiding that the baron had summoned her. On the contrary, the gloomy cloud his brow had lately worn had disappeared; he not only looked gay and joyous as of old, but a special radiance of pleasurable expectation lit up his countenance.
“Why, cook,” he said, “you have made me good pancakes all my life, but never one like this! Now tell me honestly who made this one?”
“Nay, but if it is so, I may as well have the credit of it,” thought the cook; “and, after all, I did make the batter, and that’s the chief part of the work.”
“Oh, I made it myself, baron, upon my soul! no one but myself makes any thing for the high table.”