“Your Highness’s commands shall be obeyed,” said the little lady, making a low curtsey; and she and her company passed out through the window, which closed quietly behind them. The dog stretched himself out upon the straw, the little girl turned in her sleep, and the moon shone in on the back garret. The parlor-maid was much amazed, and told the story to her mistress; but her mistress called her a silly girl to have such foolish dreams, and scolded her.
Nevertheless, Child Charity’s aunt thought there might be something in it worth knowing; so next night, when all the house was asleep she crept out of bed, and watched at the back garret door. There she saw exactly what the maid had told her.
The mistress could not close her eyes any more than the maid, from eagerness to tell the story. She woke up Child Charity’s rich uncle before daybreak; but when he heard it he laughed at her for a foolish woman. But that night the master thought he would like to see what went on in the back garret; so when all the house was asleep he set himself to watch at the crevice in the door. The same thing happened that the maid and the mistress saw.
The master could not close his eyes any more than the maid or the mistress for thinking of this strange sight. He remembered having heard his grandfather say that somewhere near his meadows there lay a path, which led to the fairies’ country, and he concluded that the doings in his back garret must be fairy business, and the ugly dog a person of very great account.
Accordingly, he made it his first business that morning to get ready a fine breakfast of roast mutton for the ugly dog, and carry it to him in the old cow-house; but not a morsel would the dog taste. On the contrary, he snarled at the master, and would have bitten him if he had not run away with his mutton.
Just as the family were sitting down to supper that night, the ugly dog began to bark, and the old woman’s knock was heard at the back door. Child Charity opened it, when the old woman said:
“This is the shortest day in all the year, and I am going home to hold a feast after my travels. I see you have taken good care of my dog, and now, if you will come with me to my house, he and I will do our best to entertain you. Here is our company.”
As the old woman spoke, there was a sound of far-off flutes and bugles, then a glare of lights; and a great company, clad so grandly that they shone with gold and jewels, came in open chariots, covered with gilding and drawn by snow-white horses. The first and finest of the chariots was empty. The old woman led Child Charity to it by the hand, and the ugly dog jumped in before her. No sooner were the old woman and her dog within the chariot than a marvelous change passed over them, for the ugly old woman turned at once to a beautiful young Princess, while the ugly dog at her side started up a fair young Prince, with nut-brown hair and a robe of purple and silver.
“We are,” said they, as the chariots drove on, and the little girl sat astonished, “a Prince and Princess of Fairy-land; and there was a wager between us whether or not there were good people still to be found in these false and greedy times. One said ‘Yes,’ and the other said ‘No’; and I have lost,” said the Prince, “and must pay for the feast and presents.”
Child Charity went with that noble company into a country such as she had never seen. They took her to a royal palace, where there was nothing but feasting and dancing for seven days. She had robes of pale-green velvet to wear, and slept in a chamber inlaid with ivory. When the feast was done, the Prince and Princess gave her such heaps of gold and jewels that she could not carry them, but they gave her a chariot to go home in, drawn by six white horses, and on the seventh night, when the farmer’s family had settled in their own minds that she would never come back, and were sitting down to supper, they heard the sound of her coachman’s bugle, and saw her alight with all the jewels and gold at the very back door where she had brought in the ugly old woman. The fairy chariot drove away, and never came back to that farmhouse after. But Child Charity scrubbed and scoured no more, for she became a great lady even in the eyes of her proud cousins, who were now eager to pay her homage.