“I can’t reach it because of my nose”, said the daughter.
So, when the mother came out and saw her, you may fancy what a way she was in, and how she screamed and groaned; but, for all that, there were the nose and the snout and the pine bush, and they got no smaller for all her grief.
Now the brother, who had got the place in the King’s stable, had taken a little sketch of his sister, which he carried away with him, and every morning and every evening he knelt down before the picture and prayed to Our Lord for his sister, whom he loved so dearly. The other grooms had heard him praying, so they peeped through the key-hole of his room, and there they saw him on his knees before the picture. So they went about saying how the lad every morning and every evening knelt down and prayed to an idol which he had, and at last they went to the king himself and begged him only to peep through the key-hole, and then His Majesty would see the lad, and what things he did. At first the King wouldn’t believe it, but at last they talked him over, and he crept on tiptoe to the door and peeped in. Yes, there was the lad on his knees before the picture, which hung on the wall, praying with clasped hands.
“Open the door!” called out the King; but the lad didn’t hear him.
So the King called out in a louder voice, but the lad was so deep in his prayers he couldn’t hear him this time either. “OPEN THE DOOR, I SAY!” roared out the King; “It’s I, the King, who want to come in.”
Well, up jumped the lad and ran to the door, and unlocked it, but in his hurry he forgot to hide the picture. But when the King came in and saw the picture, he stood there as if he were fettered, and couldn’t stir from the spot, so lovely he thought the picture.
“So lovely a woman there isn’t in all the wide world”, said the King.
But the lad told him she was his sister whom he had drawn, and if she wasn’t prettier than that, at least she wasn’t uglier.
“Well, if she’s so lovely”, said the King, “I’ll have her for my queen”; and then he ordered the lad to set off home that minute, and not be long on the road either. So the lad promised to make as much haste as he could, and started off from the King’s palace.
When the brother came home to fetch his sister, the step-mother and stepsister said they must go too. So they all set out, and the good lassie had a casket in which she kept her gold, and a little dog, whose name was “Little Flo”; those two things were all her mother left her. And when they had gone a while, they came to a lake which they had to cross; so the brother sat down at the helm, and the stepmother and the two girls sat in the bow foreward, and so they sailed a long, long way.