"Ah, madam," cried the clerk of the kitchen in a very great surprise.
"No excuse," replied she, interrupting him; "I will have it so,"—and this she spoke in the tone of an ogress, seeming to have a strong desire to taste fresh meat. "And to make the dish more delicious," added she, "I will eat her with sauce made of Robert."
This poor man, knowing very well how dangerous it was to play tricks with ogresses, took his great knife and went up into little Morning's chamber. She was then four years old, and came up to him leaping and laughing, to take him about the neck, and asked him for some sugar-candy, on which he began to weep, and the knife fell out of his hand; and he went into the back yard and killed a lamb, which he dressed with such good sauce that his mistress assured him she had never eaten anything so good in all her life.
He had at the same time taken up little Morning, and carried her to his wife, in order that she might be concealed in a lodging which he had at the bottom of the courtyard.
The queen's lascivious appetite (according to her own apprehensions) being once humoured, she again began to long for another dainty bit. Accordingly, a few days after, she called for the clerk of the kitchen, and told him that she intended that night to sup out of little Day. He answered never a word, being resolved to cheat her as he had done before. He went to find little Day, and saw him with a foil in his hand, with which he was fencing with a monkey, the child being but three years old. He took him up in his arms and carried him to his wife, that she might conceal him in her chamber, along with his sister; and, in the room of little Day, cooked up a young kid very tender, which the ogress praised as much as the former, saying it was wonderfully good.
All hitherto was mighty well; but a few evenings after this craving, the ogress said to the clerk of the kitchen, "I will also eat the young queen with the same sauce that I had with the children."
Now was the critical time, for the poor clerk despaired of being able to deceive her.
The young queen was turned of twenty years of age, not counting the hundred years she had been asleep. Though her skin was somewhat tough, yet she was fair and beautiful: and how to find a beast in the yard so firm that he might kill and cook to appease her canine appetite, was what puzzled him greatly, and made him totally at a loss what to do.
He then took a resolution that he must save his own life, and cut the queen's throat; and going into her chamber with an intent to do it at once, he put himself into as great a fury as he could, went into the queen's room with his dagger in his hand. However, his humanity would not allow him to surprise her; but he told her, with a great deal of respect, the orders he had received from the queen her mother.
"Do it," said she, stretching out her neck; "execute your orders, and I shall go and see my children, whom I so dearly love." For she thought them dead ever since they had been taken from her.